De l’imaginaire au musée: Les arts d’Afrique à Paris et à New York (1931–2006) considers the political and ideological contexts that shaped institutional display of the arts of Africa since the 1930s. Based on Maureen Murphy’s 2005 dissertation, the framework of this engaging study is the parallel but distinctive evolution of French and U.S. museums’ presentation of African artifacts as ethnographic objects or as works of art. Following a loose chronology, Murphy carefully unpacks the “imaginary” perception of Africa through its treatment in literature, popular imagery, and exhibitions.

In the introduction, Murphy distances herself from an art history “often hiding behind an approach centered on objects or aesthetics, cautious towards political or societal topics” (15; all translations from French are by the reviewer). This opening sets the stage for a politically engaged essay about the phantasmagoric representations of Africa in the West, magnified through the lens of colonialism.

Well-selected and mostly unpublished illustrations are central to Murphy’s argumentation and are extensively discussed. Each chapter of the book opens with an analysis of photographic documents that exemplifies the perspective upon which she expands throughout the chapter. The photographic portraits of two individuals, Georges-Henri Rivière, associate director of the future musée de l’Homme until 1937 (fig. 1), and Ary Leblond, director of the musée des Colonies (fig. 2), inaugurate this format in the first chapter titled, “The Museum: A ‘Colossal Mirror’ of Colonialism.” At the core of this section is the presentation of the two institutions and the elements that differentiate them from one another, which allows Murphy to set the ideological background of 1930s Paris (17–69). Toward the end of the chapter, photographs of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial at the American Museum of Natural History introduce a third contender to the story, as Murphy moves across the Atlantic to draw parallels between French and American institutions (69–89).

The back and forth between the United States and France is constitutive of the publication, which can be valued as a successful exercise in comparative study. The book’s second chapter, “A Fissure in the Wall,” navigates smoothly between one country and the other. The initial focus is on movements of Black identity, such as the Harlem Renaissance (89–100) and the emergence of “Negritude” (102, 112–19). The conflicting relationship between art, anthropology, and politics is then brought to light through a wide range of examples that include photography (Man Ray’s iconic Noire et Blanche (1926) is used as a starting point; 103–12), the Surrealists’ involvements with non-Western arts (123–33), anti-colonial literature, and journals such as Georges Bataille’s Documents. The context of select displays of African arts in private galleries both in France and the United States between the 1910s and 1930s are also examined (133–61, 181–91). Among these are the 1914 exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery 291 in New York, and exhibitions organized in France by Paul Guillaume, Charles Ratton, and Louis Carré. Archival research reveals fascinating new documentation, such as a set of glass plates at the French Society of Photography that feature views of the famous 1930 Exposition d’art africain et d’art océanien organized at the Théâtre Pigalle in Paris, of which no images were previously known (figs. 25.1–25.4; 50). Moving back from private initiatives to institutional undertakings, the inauguration of a new mode of representing African objects “as art” in American museums is brought to the forefront, in particular in the 1923 exhibition Primitive Negro Art: Chiefly from the Belgian Congo at the Brooklyn Museum, and in the landmark 1935 exhibition African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (161–81).

The story of the evolving perception of Africa after World War II is addressed in the third chapter. Its title, “How New York Also Stole the Idea of African Art,” references Serge Guilbaut’s 1983 seminal book, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). In this homage to Guilbaut’s work, Murphy argues that in the aftermath of World War II, the United States dethroned France as the main promoter of African arts by further emphasizing a presumed relationship between African arts and Modernism. Starting her argumentation with MoMA’s 1955 controversial exhibition of photography, Family of Man (193–208), Murphy then turns her attention to the opening, in 1957, of Nelson A. Rockefeller’s Museum of Primitive Art (MPA) in New York. She highlights the institutional and political ties that existed between MoMA and the MPA while describing several exhibitions and the museum’s display practices (208–19). Collecting trends that emerged in the United States during the 1950s are examined, in particular the collection assembled by beauty magnate Helena Rubinstein. Murphy decides to focus on the exhibition history of the celebrated commemorative figure of a Bangwa priestess from Western Cameroon now in the collection of the musée Dapper in Paris (Acc. Num. 3343), which was turned into a modernist icon through the lens of photographers Man Ray and Walker Evans (224–39). Next is a rapid overview of European dealers who settled in the United States during the 1950s, such as Henri and Hélène Kamer, Ladislas Segy, Julius Carlebach, and John J. Klejman (241–45). One would have wanted to read more on this topic, as it has rarely been approached from a scholarly perspective. A brief mention of the MPA’s participation in the 1966 Festival mondial des arts nègres in Dakar, Senegal, allows Murphy to transition into the impact of independence movements during the late 1950s and 1960s in the changing perception of African arts in the West. Much attention is given to the cultural politics of Senegalese president Léopold Sédar Senghor (249–64) and the 1966 Dakar Festival (264–77).

The fourth chapter, “From the Redemption to the Sacralization of African Arts,” focuses on the period from the 1980s through the year 2000. Murphy defines the artistic recognition of African arts in America during these decades as epitomized by the transfer of the MPA collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She also points out the development of postcolonial critical discourses on representation practices following MoMA’s 1984 exhibition Primitivism in Twentieth Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, as well as exhibitions organized during that decade by New York’s Center for African Art (279–89). These American developments are put in perspective when positioned against French initiatives. Analysis of the exhibition Magiciens de la terre, a 1989 French response to MoMA’s Primitivism show, which featured contemporary arts from around the world, is followed by reviews of the Louvre’s Pavillon des Sessions and the musée du Quai Branly, opened in 2000 and 2006 (289–17), respectively, as well as the Centre Pompidou’s 2005 exhibition Africa Remix: L’art contemporain d’un continent (317–25). Murphy criticizes these installations for their inability to move away from a Eurocentric and prejudice-filled perception of Africa. It is in this final section that the multitude of examples contemplated throughout the study come together. Its goal, as it becomes evident, is not to present a history of the reception of African arts by the West, but to put in perspective France’s most recent iterations in the exercise of exhibiting African arts.

In the publication’s epilogue, which serves as conclusion (325–38), the reader follows the “social life” of a celebrated work on view at the Louvre since 2000 (Acc. Num. 71.1894.32.1): the close-to-life-size representation of Gou, the Fon deity of iron and war created during the first half of the nineteenth century by a renowned royal blacksmith of Abomey, the capital city of the Dahomey kingdom in the present-day Republic of Benin. The content of this epilogue appears slightly off-topic at first, but in fact comes as a welcome addition. Indeed, works of art seem painfully absent throughout the book: works exhibited in the institutions and galleries examined are rarely discussed. As seen earlier, Murphy clearly stated that her interest lay elsewhere, but this closing allows her to bring the object back to the center of her study by stating that, “History and politics constitute the texture that surrounds the work, they feed our eye and participate to the creation, to the daily invention of the object” (336).

One can only praise the overarching, cross-cutting nature of this book, and its wide temporal and geographical frameworks. The bibliography attests to the vast array of sources consulted, from extensive archival material in France and in the United States, to doctoral theses, journals, and other reference publications. In addition, interviews with curators, artists, and museum directors add lively insights into the field. For U.S. readers, several publications available at the time of the book’s redaction, however, will stand out as significant omissions. Among these, topics extensively developed by Murphy would have certainly benefited from discussion of Christa Clarke’s dissertation, Defining Taste: Albert Barnes and the Promotion of African Arts in the United States during the 1920s (PhD diss., University of Maryland, 1998), or Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries, edited by Sarah Greenough (Washington: National Gallery of Art; Boston: Bulfinch Press, 2000), which includes Helen Shannon’s essay on 291’s exhibition of African arts, “African Art, 1914: The Root of Modern Art” (168–83).

Moreover, an unfortunate consequence of the expansive ground covered is the book’s imprecision on certain periods or events. In particular, the section on historical exhibitions of African arts in art galleries presents factual errors such as confusion between exhibition titles, mislabeled illustrations, and misspelled names. The study also suffers from poor editing and presents errors that are certainly the consequence of the transformation from doctoral thesis into publication: the relatively cryptic chapter titles and too few subtitles give little structure to the book, which feels truncated. Additionally, the reader is at times distracted by missing footnotes or inverted illustrations.

De l’imaginaire au musée, nevertheless, provides a unique condensed overview on the shifting interpretation of African arts in France and the United States during the past hundred years. It brings great insights to readers interested in the underlying politics of the perception of these arts and their complex ideological backgrounds. More specifically, published three years after the opening of the musée du Quai Branly, the study provides a welcomed historical contextualization of this institution’s politics of display.