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Fowler Museum at UCLA

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The Fowler Museum at UCLA (commonly known as The Fowler, and formerly Museum of Cultural History and Fowler Museum of Cultural History) 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.

Fowler Museum at UCLA
Fowler Museum at UCLA is located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area
Fowler Museum at UCLA
Location of The Fowler in Los Angeles
Established1963
Location308 Charles E. Young Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90024
United States
Coordinates34°04′22″N 118°26′35″W / 34.0728°N 118.4431°W / 34.0728; -118.4431
TypeArt museum, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
DirectorMarla C. Berns [1]
Websitefowler.ucla.edu

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.

History

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Fowler Museum Plan by Savrann
 
Fowler Museum under Construction

The museum was established in 1963 by then UCLA Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy as the Museum and Laboratories of Ethnic Arts and Technology.[2] 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.[3]

In 1981, UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young, along with museum director, Christopher B. Donnan, developed a plan for a new building to better exhibit the collection. The $22-million structure, designed by architects Arnold C. Savrann and John Carl Warnecke, was funded by both private gifts and state resources.[4] The large facility called the Fowler Museum of Cultural History opened on September 30, 1992,[5] named in recognition of lead support by the Fowler Foundation and the family of collector and inventor Francis E. Fowler Jr., former owner of Southern Comfort.[6][7] In 1996, Doran H. Ross became the director of the Fowler.[8] In 2006, the name of the museum was formally changed to the Fowler Museum at UCLA.[2]

In 2024, the museum repatriated to Ghana several artifacts in its collection that were previously looted by British forces from the Ashanti Empire in the 19th century. These included an elephant tail whisk, an ornamental chair made of wood, leather and iron, two gold stool ornaments, a gold necklace and two bracelets.[9]

Collections

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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.[10]

The majority of the Fowler's holdings have been acquired via donations by individuals. The Sir Henry Wellcome Collection of 30,000 objects,[11][12] assembled early in the 20th century by Sir Henry Wellcome and given to the museum in 1965, forms the core of its 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.[13]

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 workshops of Paul de Lamerie, Karl Fabergé, and Paul Revere. In 1969, Hollywood actress Natalie Wood donated a collection of ancient Chupícuaro Mexican ceramics to the Fowler Museum.[14] In 2013, the Fowler Museum received several gifts in honor of its fiftieth anniversary. One gift was 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.[15]

Most of the holdings have been collected in the field and systematically documented, providing contextual information. 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. A collection of more than 900 Mexican works was donated in 1997 by the Daniel Family and includes ceramic Trees of Life, Day of the Dead figurines, and masks from Metepec, Oaxaca, Michoacan, Jalisco, Puebla, and Guanajuato.[16]

Exhibitions

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Selected collection highlights

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  •  
    Chief's Mask, Haida people, British Columbia, 19th century,
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    Buddha, Sagaing, Burma, 17th century
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    Mask (tsesah), Bamileke people, Bamendjo, Cameroon, Late 19th century
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    Headdress, Efut peoples, Calabar, Nigeria, 19th century
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    Hornbill figure, Iban, Borneo, 19th century
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    Portrait vessel, Moche style, north coast Peru,100–800 C.E.
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    Ornament for a sacred flute, Mundugumor people, Yuat River, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, 19th century
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    Power figure (nkisi nkondi), Yombe peoples, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 18th–19th century
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    Ceramic, Magdalene Odundo (Kenya, b. 1950)
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    Hand puppet, the Blind Scholar, Chinese, Taiwan, Early–mid-20th century
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    Santo, Virgin of the Rosary, Guatemala, Early 20th century
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    Mask (amiilk), Tsimshian peoples, British Columbia, Canada, 19th century

Directors

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  • Christopher B. Donnan (1981–1996)[18]
  • Doran H. Ross (1996–2001)[18]
  • Marla C. Berns (2001–)[19] Previously,

In 2007, Berns' position was endowed by a $1 million donation from Los Angeles philanthropists Shirley and Ralph Shapiro in recognition of her contributions to UCLA and the community.[20][21] 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 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.[1]

References

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  1. ^ a b Abarbanel, Stacey (March 27, 2007). "Press Release: Fowler Museum Received $1 Million Endowment for Director's Position" (Press release). Los Angeles.
  2. ^ a b Muchnic, Suzanne (August 27, 2006). "ARTS NOTES Meaning lost, name changes". Los Angeles Times.
  3. ^ Dundjerski, Marina (2011). UCLA : The First Century (Third ed.). Los Angeles: UCLA Alumni, UCLA History Project. p. 153. ISBN 9781906507374.
  4. ^ UCLA Alumni. "Sept. 30, 1992 Gallery of World Arts Unveiled". UCLA History. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Alumni. Archived from the original on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
  5. ^ Muchnic, Suzanne (September 27, 1992). "Go (Anywhere But) West : UCLA's Fowler Museum of Cultural History, dedicated to non-Western traditions, opens 29 years after being conceived". Los Angeles Times.
  6. ^ Poundstone, William (October 28, 2013). "Francis Fowler's Museum at UCLA". Blouin Art Info.
  7. ^ "When the World Came to Westwood: The Fowler Museum at 50". UCLA Magazine. Retrieved 2020-03-21.
  8. ^ Berns, Marla (October 23, 2020). "In memoriam: Doran Ross, 73, Fowler Museum's former director and Ghanaian art scholar". UCLA. Retrieved July 13, 2022.
  9. ^ "US museum returns Ghana's Looted Artifacts after 150 years". Africanews. 9 February 2024.
  10. ^ Muchnic, Suzanne (September 28, 2013). "UCLA's Fowler Museum turns 50 in worldly fashion". Los Angeles Times.
  11. ^ Hasinoff, Erin L. (November 2011). "An Infinity of Things: How Sir Henry Wellcome Collected the World. Frances Larson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009". Museum Anthropology Review. 5 (1–2). Bloomington, IN: Mathers Museum of World Cultures: 140–143.
  12. ^ Poundstone, William (November 11, 2013). "How the Fowler Got a Bamileke Masterpiece". Blouin Art Info.
  13. ^ Muchnic, Suzanne (February 11, 2009). "L.A. museums' collections grow despite poor economy". Los Angeles Times.
  14. ^ Green, Natalie (January 9, 2014). "Q&A: Victoria Lyall discusses Chupícuaro pottery, upcoming Fowler lecture". Daily Bruin. Los Angeles, CA. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
  15. ^ Ng, David (22 October 2013). "Fowler Museum at UCLA receives art gift estimated at $14 million". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
  16. ^ Cosentino, Delia A.; Mulryan, Lenore Hoag (2003). Ceramic Trees of Life:Popular Art from Mexico. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. p. 8. ISBN 9780930741969.
  17. ^ Zinoman, Jason (Oct 1, 2006). "The Week Ahead: Oct. 1 - Oct. 7 - New York Times". New York Times.
  18. ^ a b Choi, Linda (February 11, 1999). "Fowler Museum exhibit wrapped in African pride". Daily Bruin. UCLA. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
  19. ^ Hood, Amy (October 10, 2001). "Marla C. Berns Named New Director of the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History". UCLA Newsroom.
  20. ^ Luther, Claudia (Jun 1, 2014). "Bringing World Cultures to Campus". UCLA Magazine.
  21. ^ Abarbanel, Stacey (March 28, 2007). "UCLA's Fowler Museum Receives $1 Million Endowment for Director's Position". UCLA Newsroom.
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34°4′22″N 118°26′35″W / 34.07278°N 118.44306°W / 34.07278; -118.44306

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