In the lead-up to the reopening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at the end of the month, the collector and dealer Adam Lindemann—head of the steering committee for the wing, dedicated to the arts of Africa, Oceania and the ancient Americas—has put on a show at his residence a few blocks away. The non-selling exhibition Urhobo + Abstraction (until 13 June) features Urhobo sculptures from the western Niger Delta, shown together for the first time in the US, along with several Igbo figures and a few works by icons of Modern and contemporary Black abstraction—including Ed Clark, Norman Lewis, Richard Mayhew, Merton D. Simpson and Alma Thomas.
Lindemann, who also owns the gallery Venus Over Manhattan, has mounted the exhibition inside his David Adjaye-designed home. It is open to the public and anchored by five 19th-century Urhobo wood carvings of warriors and royalty, one of which belongs to Lindemann’s private collection. The dealer Bernard de Grunne, who specialises in African art and sold the Urhobo work to Lindemann, helped secure some of the show’s other pieces from private collections in the US and Belgium.
Although Lindemann’s gallery usually focuses on figurative painting, he wanted to make aesthetic and narrative connections in Urhobo + Abstraction between the historical works and those of Black American abstractionists, especially members of the 1960s Spiral movement. Growing out of the Civil Rights movement, the network of painters included Lewis, Mayhew and Simpson, who used non-figuration to speak to inequality and the human experience.
Installation view of Urhobo + Abstraction with a work by Ed Clark at right Courtesy Venus Over Manhattan
“I had to start the show with Simpson, who was also a foremost dealer of African art,” Lindemann tells The Art Newspaper. On view at the show, Simpson’s Confrontation (1974) holds an energetic curvaceous form in its nexus, reminiscent of the sculptures’ bulbous contours. Mayhew, whose estate is represented by Venus Over Manhattan, is celebrated via one of his “mindscapes” from 2023, in which a sweeping dreamscape straddles between landscape and illusion.
As for the historical pieces, Lindemann is fascinated by the Urhobo works’ larger-than-life command and unexpected silhouettes. Slightly larger than life size, with elongated torsos and short limbs, they embody heroes and ancestors with a nod to divine immortality. They feature crowns made from bushpig teeth, and three of the male figures don top hats—a reflection of their creators' interactions with European colonialists.
“There is an interesting challenge to tradition with each artist having carved in their own style,” De Grunne says of the Urhobo works, pointing to a connection between rendering the notion of immortality and replicating nature.
Lindemann sees his show’s totemic figures as constituting less explored territory of African art traditions. While the Met will not exhibit Urhobo sculpture in its updated Rockefeller Wing, Lindemann expects that at least one Igbo object will be on view. He foresees the wing’s reopening as introducing a “renaissance” in art from the region.
- Urhobo + Abstraction, 77 East 77th Street, New York, until 13 June
