Art of the Ancestors Flores & Sumba Gallery Renovations
Art of the Ancestors closes 2020 with additions of art to our galleries from the islands of Sumba and Flores. Sumba, which was known as Sandalwood Island in the 18th century, was once a source for the fragrant and valuable wood, as its former name implies. Once denuded of these precious trees, the island became famous for horse breeding and cattle trading during the colonial era. The West encountered Flores or Cabo de Flores (Cape of Flowers) when the Portuguese explorers, de Abreu and Serrão, sailing from the Sunda islands, first sighted this impressive island in 1511. Sumba and Flores are part of a chain of islands that are now known as Nusa Tenggara Timur, lying east of Bali and west of the island of Timor.
Long famed for its megaliths, enchanting villages, and material culture, Sumba's warrior class is enshrined and still personified by the annual Pasola festival where warriors on horseback throw wooden spears at one another during mock battles. In bygone days, blood had to be shed in these gladiatorials to ensure a successful planting and harvesting season.
From Sumba, there is so much to celebrate this month in the realm of the female arts, ranging from exquisite ikat blankets and supplementary warp skirts or sarongs to ritual shell and beaded pieces. We are proud to present a rediscovered and long unheralded hinggi from the Metropolitan Museum of Art that we had re-photographed. It was once owned by an old friend and mentor of mine, the late Peter Mol. Also from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there is a finely wrought gold mamuli or large omega-shaped earring (See: Eyes of the Ancestors, page 215, fig. 90 for a Kodi woman wearing such an earring. Buhler: 1949), a gift of Jean-Paul and Monique Barbier-Mueller in 1988, that charmingly depicts a pair of long-horned hairy beasts that resemble a cross between a buffalo and a mountain goat. A number of details from renowned stone monuments still in situ in Sumba are paired with penji or vertical megaliths from the Dallas Museum and the Yale University Art Gallery.
Flores is the more lush and mountainous of the two islands. The island is bounded by Sumbawa and Komodo island to its West and a cluster of islands to the East that includes Alor and Lembata. A small selection of precious objects from Alor and Lembata are featured for the first time in our Flores Gallery.
We are pleased to showcase the famous 'Bronze Weaver,' a late Bronze Age or early Iron Age piece of unknown origin, found on Flores, whose beauty and powerful guise make her the jewel of the National Gallery of Australia's Indonesian collection. This figure is one of the most iconic pieces of traditional Indonesian art extant. Additions to the Flores gallery include several notable Nage and Ngada wooden statues, masks, and an extraordinary threshold to a ritual Ngada dwelling (bhaga) that honors an important female ancestor. A variety of stunning textiles continue to be introduced, of which a three-paneled cloth from Lamalera (Lembata island) in the Museum fur Volkerkunde, Frankfurt, and collected in 1928-29 by Ernst and Hannah Vatter is especially noteworthy.
With these fine additions, we hope that our readers will take recourse to the academic literature on the islands of Nusatenggara Timur and continue to investigate our ever-expanding galleries.
— Steven G. Alpert