The height of the Ile-Ife civilisation spanned the 12th-15th centuries. As Yoruba folklore tells it, Ile-Ife was where the world began.
Ife, as it is called today, is associated with the ancestors, kings, queens and deities of the Yoruba-speaking peoples and is revered as the descendant of the original creator gods. The King of Benin, another great West African and Yoruba civilisation, traces his royal descent back to Ife.
Storytelling is a strong element within the Yoruba culture. One of my favourites from this oral tradition tells of a ruler, Oni Oluwo, who was walking around the capital when her regalia was splashed with mud. She was so upset that she ordered the construction of pavements for all the public and religious places in the city of Ife.
Interestingly, pottery shards were used to make the pavements and are common in West Africa, with most evidence coming from archaeological digs at sites within Ife. So Ife is spoken about as pre-pavement era, AD800-AD1000, and post-pavement era, after AD1000.
The exhibition in room 35 at the British Museum (BM) is essentially an art show. It is a showcase of the fine art of Ife, Nigeria, and one that seems to want to finally accept that Africa had the capability to produce refined art pieces.
The majority of the pieces in the exhibition are made of copper, brass or terracotta and, fittingly, examples of all three are presented in the introduction to the exhibition.
The first piece in copper is the only complete full-figured sculpture displayed (most are heads and others have a body part missing) and is beautiful and stunning in its well-preserved state. It shows the figure of an ooni (king) identified as such by his crown made of glass beads, some imported and some manufactured in Ife.
An upright attachment at the front of the crown could be an emblem of a specific ruling dynasty. Only three of the hundred-plus heads in the exhibition have this detail.
The people of Ife were a trading community from about AD800, but it was around the post-pavement period that they developed a powerful city – having built walls around their empire. A German explorer visited Ife in 1910 having heard about the legendary city. He believed that Ife was the lost city of Atlantis.
The second section of the BM show details how Europeans could not believe that an African civilisation had created a kingdom with a flourishing city that had trade links that had reached America before Columbus had. Instead, they preferred to imagine this great art was of Greek origin.
Avant garde
This section continues with the sensation created in the western art world by the 17 heads found in 1938 in Wunmonije in Ife during the laying of foundations for a house. It’s interesting to find out how BM archaeologists at the time got involved in the dig and how the British press reported it.
But what was missing from this section was the Ife people’s reaction to the find. Was there one? Evidence shows that the people, including its rulers and priests, knew about the art long before the Europeans started taking note of it (the information-rich £25 exhibition catalogue shows this). Objects that were found by the Ife were preserved in shrines or taken to the palace for safekeeping, but their story is absent here.
The art continues to be astounding, with life-size heads and their naturalistic expressions running through the exhibition. The heads are significant because it was through them that power and authority were defined.
The scarification on the faces of most of the sculptures is similar, but there are differences that show that Ife was a cosmopolitan society. Outsiders undoubtedly flocked to the most powerful city of the lower Niger region for 300 years.
The highlight of the exhibition has been flagged up as a copper-seated figure dated from the late 1200s/early 1300s. It’s seen as so important because of the skill needed to make it. Cast in pure copper, a harder material to cast than other metals because of its higher melting point and low flow, its smooth finish makes it close to flawless.
With its 109 pieces on loan from the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Nigeria, and two from the nine Ife artefacts in the BM’s collections, the show is meant to wow, and it does.
The BM explains in the show that little is known about how the sculptures, specifically the heads, were used, and who would have carved them. In the Ife Society section there is some guesswork about whether the civilisation practised human sacrifice, capital punishment, or both.
I found information available in history books and even the exhibition catalogue that was missing from the exhibition. Many of the oral tradition stories could have been brought to life to give a better understanding of the people and their society.
Fertility figure
I have seen the exhibition twice and the second time I used the multimedia guide with video, stills and excellent audio from BM trustees, Chief Eleazar Chukwuemeka Anyaoku and Bonnie Greer. Curators Claude Ardouin and Julie Hudson provide some illuminating context. The £4.50 guide is narrated by actor Sophie Okonedo, and is a useful addition to the interpretation.
It brought to life the story behind the pure copper seated figure that was used by the people of Tada, a village in Ife where it was within a shrine, as a fertility figure. And John Picton, now a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, tells us how, in 1968, he took the figure by canoe from Tada to Lagos, where it is now kept in its museum.
But the real purpose of this exhibition is to show the craft and skill of this African civilisation in the middle ages. In doing so, it strikes a belated note of recognition and a redressing of the European prejudicial attitudes that until now failed to consider Africa as a world player on the art stage.
Cost £560,000
Sponsor Santander
Additional support AG Leventis Foundation
Exhibition organisers British Museum, London; Fundación Marcelino Botín, Santander, Spain; Museum for African Art, New York, US; in collaboration with the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Nigeria
Curators Claude Ardouin, BM, Julie Hudson, BM
Guest curator Enid Schildkrout, Museum of African Art, New York
Exhibition design British Museum exhibitions department, Aaron Jones Museum and Exhibition Design
Graphic design Surface 3
Audiovisual content Blinkin Lab
Lighting design Richard Aldridge
Exhibition construction The Hub
Graphic production BAF Graphics, Praxis
Project management British Museum exhibitions department
Transport Manterola, Momart
Multimedia guide content British Museum
Exhibition ends 6 June
Ife, as it is called today, is associated with the ancestors, kings, queens and deities of the Yoruba-speaking peoples and is revered as the descendant of the original creator gods. The King of Benin, another great West African and Yoruba civilisation, traces his royal descent back to Ife.
Storytelling is a strong element within the Yoruba culture. One of my favourites from this oral tradition tells of a ruler, Oni Oluwo, who was walking around the capital when her regalia was splashed with mud. She was so upset that she ordered the construction of pavements for all the public and religious places in the city of Ife.
Interestingly, pottery shards were used to make the pavements and are common in West Africa, with most evidence coming from archaeological digs at sites within Ife. So Ife is spoken about as pre-pavement era, AD800-AD1000, and post-pavement era, after AD1000.
The exhibition in room 35 at the British Museum (BM) is essentially an art show. It is a showcase of the fine art of Ife, Nigeria, and one that seems to want to finally accept that Africa had the capability to produce refined art pieces.
The majority of the pieces in the exhibition are made of copper, brass or terracotta and, fittingly, examples of all three are presented in the introduction to the exhibition.
The first piece in copper is the only complete full-figured sculpture displayed (most are heads and others have a body part missing) and is beautiful and stunning in its well-preserved state. It shows the figure of an ooni (king) identified as such by his crown made of glass beads, some imported and some manufactured in Ife.
An upright attachment at the front of the crown could be an emblem of a specific ruling dynasty. Only three of the hundred-plus heads in the exhibition have this detail.
The people of Ife were a trading community from about AD800, but it was around the post-pavement period that they developed a powerful city – having built walls around their empire. A German explorer visited Ife in 1910 having heard about the legendary city. He believed that Ife was the lost city of Atlantis.
The second section of the BM show details how Europeans could not believe that an African civilisation had created a kingdom with a flourishing city that had trade links that had reached America before Columbus had. Instead, they preferred to imagine this great art was of Greek origin.
Avant garde
This section continues with the sensation created in the western art world by the 17 heads found in 1938 in Wunmonije in Ife during the laying of foundations for a house. It’s interesting to find out how BM archaeologists at the time got involved in the dig and how the British press reported it.
But what was missing from this section was the Ife people’s reaction to the find. Was there one? Evidence shows that the people, including its rulers and priests, knew about the art long before the Europeans started taking note of it (the information-rich £25 exhibition catalogue shows this). Objects that were found by the Ife were preserved in shrines or taken to the palace for safekeeping, but their story is absent here.
The art continues to be astounding, with life-size heads and their naturalistic expressions running through the exhibition. The heads are significant because it was through them that power and authority were defined.
The scarification on the faces of most of the sculptures is similar, but there are differences that show that Ife was a cosmopolitan society. Outsiders undoubtedly flocked to the most powerful city of the lower Niger region for 300 years.
The highlight of the exhibition has been flagged up as a copper-seated figure dated from the late 1200s/early 1300s. It’s seen as so important because of the skill needed to make it. Cast in pure copper, a harder material to cast than other metals because of its higher melting point and low flow, its smooth finish makes it close to flawless.
With its 109 pieces on loan from the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Nigeria, and two from the nine Ife artefacts in the BM’s collections, the show is meant to wow, and it does.
The BM explains in the show that little is known about how the sculptures, specifically the heads, were used, and who would have carved them. In the Ife Society section there is some guesswork about whether the civilisation practised human sacrifice, capital punishment, or both.
I found information available in history books and even the exhibition catalogue that was missing from the exhibition. Many of the oral tradition stories could have been brought to life to give a better understanding of the people and their society.
Fertility figure
I have seen the exhibition twice and the second time I used the multimedia guide with video, stills and excellent audio from BM trustees, Chief Eleazar Chukwuemeka Anyaoku and Bonnie Greer. Curators Claude Ardouin and Julie Hudson provide some illuminating context. The £4.50 guide is narrated by actor Sophie Okonedo, and is a useful addition to the interpretation.
It brought to life the story behind the pure copper seated figure that was used by the people of Tada, a village in Ife where it was within a shrine, as a fertility figure. And John Picton, now a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, tells us how, in 1968, he took the figure by canoe from Tada to Lagos, where it is now kept in its museum.
But the real purpose of this exhibition is to show the craft and skill of this African civilisation in the middle ages. In doing so, it strikes a belated note of recognition and a redressing of the European prejudicial attitudes that until now failed to consider Africa as a world player on the art stage.
Project data
Cost £560,000
Sponsor Santander
Additional support AG Leventis Foundation
Exhibition organisers British Museum, London; Fundación Marcelino Botín, Santander, Spain; Museum for African Art, New York, US; in collaboration with the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Nigeria
Curators Claude Ardouin, BM, Julie Hudson, BM
Guest curator Enid Schildkrout, Museum of African Art, New York
Exhibition design British Museum exhibitions department, Aaron Jones Museum and Exhibition Design
Graphic design Surface 3
Audiovisual content Blinkin Lab
Lighting design Richard Aldridge
Exhibition construction The Hub
Graphic production BAF Graphics, Praxis
Project management British Museum exhibitions department
Transport Manterola, Momart
Multimedia guide content British Museum
Exhibition ends 6 June
