The Fowler Museum at UCLA, or more commonly, The Fowler, is a museum on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) which explores art and material culture primarily from Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and the Americas, past and present.
The Fowler is generally home to three to six art exhibitions and also acts as a venue for lectures on cultural topics, musical performances, art workshops, family programs, festivals and more. The Fowler is located in the northern part of UCLA's Westwood Campus, adjacent to Royce Hall and Glorya Kaufman Hall.
The museum is operated under the jurisdiction of UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture (UCLA Arts).
History
The museum was established in 1963 by then UCLA Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy as the Museum and Laboratories of Ethnic Arts and Technology. Its first home was in the basement of Haines Hall on the UCLA campus. The goal of this new museum was to consolidate the various collections of non-Western art and artifacts on campus. In addition to active collecting, the museum initiated research projects, fieldwork, exhibitions and publications.
In 1971 the name was changed to the Museum of Cultural History and by 1975 its collections, in numbers and in quality, ranked it among the top four university museums in the country, a stature it retains to the present day.
In 1981, Chancellor Charles E. Young, along with museum director, Christopher B. Donnan, developed a vision for a new building that would fully exhibit the immense collection. The $22-million structure, designed by architects Arnold C. Savrann and John Carl Warnecke, was funded by both private gifts and state resources. The large facility called the Fowler Museum of Cultural History opened on September 30, 1992, named in recognition of lead support by the Fowler Foundation and the family of collector and inventor Francis E. Fowler Jr. In 2006 the name of the Museum was formally changed to the Fowler Museum at UCLA.
Fowler at Fifty
In the fall of 2013, the Museum launched its fiftieth anniversary celebration with a night of festivities and the opening of eight special exhibitions from its global collections. The eight exhibitions, which ran through winter and spring of 2014, were:
- From the Sepik River to Los Angeles: Art in Migration
- Double Fortune, Double Trouble: Art for Twins among the Yorùbá
- Powerful Bodies: Zulu Arts of Personal Adornment
- MÄori Cloaks, MÄori Voices
- The Peruvian Four-Selvaged Cloth: Ancient Threads/New Directions
- New World Wunderkammer: A Project by Amalia Mesa-Bains
- ChupÃcuaro: The Natalie Wood Gift of Ancient Mexican Ceramics
- From X to Why: A Museum Takes Shape
In addition to these exhibitions, the Fowler also exhibited new and promised gifts of art inside the rotating Fowler in Focus gallery, and presented Walk among Worlds, an installation by artist Máximo González composed of thousands of beach ball globes.
Collections
The Fowler's collections comprise more than 120,000 art and ethnographic and 600,000 archaeological objects representing ancient, traditional, and contemporary cultures of Africa, Native and Latin America, and Asia and the Pacific. From Yoruba beaded arts of Southern Nigeria, to pre-Columbian ceramic vessels of Peru, to elaborate batik textiles of Indonesia and the vibrant papier-mâché sculptures of Mexico, the Fowler's collections offer a comprehensive resource for exhibitions and scholarship central to the Museum's mandate.
The majority of the Museum's holdings has been acquired via the generosity of individualsâ€"researchers, scholars, and dedicated collectorsâ€"who have enabled the Fowler to build its world-class collections. The Sir Henry Wellcome Collection of 30,000 objects, assembled early in the last century by Wellcome and given to the Museum in 1965, forms the core of our African and Pacific holdings and represents the single largest gift. More than 15,000 textiles trace the history of cloth over two millennia and across five continents.
Objects from the Fowler Family Silver Collection include 400 works representing 16th- through 19th-century Europe and the United States. Among these are vessels from the renowned workshops of Paul de Lamerie, Karl Fabergé, and Paul Revere. In 1969, Hollywood actress Natalie Wood donated a remarkable collection of ancient ChupÃcuaro Mexican ceramics to the Fowler Museum. Later in 2013, the Fowler Museum received several gift in honor of its fiftieth anniversity. One gift estimated to be worth around $14 million, from collector and Silicon Valley pioneer Jay Last and his wife, Deborah. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the gift consisted of 92 wood and ivory objects from the Lega people of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Most of the holdings has been collected in the field and systematically documented, providing essential contextual information. Maintaining geographical scope and artistic variety and building on existing strengths continue to be guiding principles in acquisitions decisions. For example, as the Museum augments its programming to meet the interests of the city's growing Latin American population, collection activities in this area have increased. An exceptional collection of more than 900 Mexican works was donated in 1997 by the Daniel Family and includes magnificent ceramic Trees of Life, Day of the Dead figurines, and masks from Metepec, Oaxaca, Michoacan, Jalisco, Puebla, and Guanajuato.
Public Programs
Offered throughout the year, the Fowler's public programs are designed to reflect and complement its dynamic exhibition program, as well as highlight the Museum's world-renowned collection of art from Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and the Americas. Public programs at the Fowler Museum are typically free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted.
Conversations and Lectures
Current and ongoing exhibitions provide the starting point for programming that touches upon scholarly as well as general interest topics. The signature series, Fowler OutSpoken, features speakers in a lecture, conversation, or panel format, and provides audiences with access to emerging and established artists, curators, scholars, performers, and other cultural figures.
Concert and Performances
The Fowler offers educational and entertaining events throughout the year showcasing world music and performances by local and international artists. Fowler Out Loud is the museum's performance series that takes place on Thursday nights throughout the academic school year and features international music, dance, poetry, theater, and performance art by UCLA students.
Events and Tours
From artist walkthroughs to monthly Culture Fix gallery chats, the Fowler offers numerous opportunities to engage with its exhibitions. In-depth study programs and the museum's signature Fowler on the Town series feature site visits to places of interest in Los Angeles and surrounding areas.
Film Screenings and Workshops
The Fowler presents film screenings throughout the year. The Fowler offers documentaries and features that relate to current exhibitions.Cooking programs, hands-on demonstrations, and dance and yoga are offered on occasion.
Education
The primary mission of the Fowler's Education Department is to strengthen global arts and humanities education â€" particularly at the K-12 level â€" by helping to increase understanding of our world's cultural and artistic traditions.
School Visit Program
The Fowler Museum offers a school visit program, where students explore the diverse peoples of the world â€" their arts, traditions, and beliefs â€" with a visit to galleries and exhibitions. This program serves students of all ages and abilities.
Curricular Materials
Curriculum Resource Units are offered for many of the Museum's major exhibitions and are intended to broaden and deepen teachers' and students' engagement with the arts, through the lens of the Fowler's diverse collections. Intended for use by K-12 teachers, these units stress students' active exploration of selected cultures and encourage ongoing dialogues about the meanings of the arts in everyday life.
Professional Development Opportunities
The Fowler Museum also presents diverse professional development offerings and resources for teachers.
ARTalk
ARTalk is a series of interdisciplinary, humanities-based workshops designed to enrich, refresh, and recharge K-12 educators. These workshops are held once per quarter. Using the Museum's unique collections as catalysts, teachers are engaged in direct learning through dialogues with scholars, guest artists, and colleagues. Museum educators model exhibition-based lesson plans and art-making activities. All ARTalk workshops are linked to state and district standards and are approved by the Salary Point Unit of Los Angeles Unified School District. Teachers are eligible to receive one or two multicultural general or specific salary point credits, depending on the course requirements. Teachers from other districts will receive a certificate verifying professional development hours.
Summer Institutes
Every summer, the Fowler Museum holds a week-long professional development course for about 25 educators. Summer Institutes focus on particular topics related to exhibitions and the museum's collections and present opportunities to join with other teachers in in-depth explorations and study of the arts and humanities.
Through lectures by guest speakers, art-making projects, field trips to other cultural institutions and sites in Los Angeles, and the exploration of objects in galleries with trained educators. LAUSD teachers who complete the Summer Institute can earn 2 salary points for their participation.
Exhibitions
- Intersections: World Arts, Local Lives
- Reflecting Culture: The Francis E. Fowler, Jr. Collection of Silver
- Plus several changing exhibitions
Selected Collection Highlights
Leadership
Marla C. Berns has served as the director of the Fowler Museum at UCLA since 2001. Previously Doran H. Ross, who succeeded Christopher B. Donnan (1981-1996), served as the museum director from 1996 to 2001. One of the most significant initiatives that Berns has launched as director came to fruition in 2006 with the opening of Intersections: World Arts, Local Lives, the Museum’s first long-term exhibition of highlights from its renowned permanent collection. The exhibition features a unique thematic and cross-cultural approach and incorporates a wide range of technologies, and has become a staple for K-12 and college-level multicultural education in the Los Angeles area, as well as a favorite stop for general museum visitors interested in world arts.
In addition to continuing the Fowler’s pioneering work in the presentation of global arts and cultures, Berns has encouraged the presentation of the work of contemporary artists in exhibitions that speak to both the ongoing dynamism of world cultures and to the resonances between contemporary art and traditional practices. To that end, the Fowler has presented several much-praised solo exhibitions, including the work of the celebrated Ghanaian artist El Anatsui (2007), Cuban-born artist José Bedia (2011), San Francisco-based performance and photo-conceptual artist Allan deSouza (2011), and the riotous Soundsuits of Nick Cave (2010), one of the Fowler’s most popular exhibitions to date.
In 2007, her position was endowed by a $1 million donation from Los Angeles philanthropists Shirley and Ralph Shapiro in recognition of her outstanding contributions to UCLA and the community. In 2013, Berns received the medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters of the French Republic in a ceremony conducted by Stéphane Martin, president of the Quai Branly Museum. The ceremony took place at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris on Tues., Nov 12, at the opening of Secrets d'ivoire: L'art des Lega d'Afrique centrale, an exhibition of the Fowler Museum’s unparalleled collection of African artwork by the Lega peoples of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was donated to the Fowler by collectors Jay T. and Deborah R. Last.
References
External links
- Fowler Museum Website
- Fowler Museum Facebook Page
- Fowler Museum Overview of Collections
- Fowler Museum Collections Online
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