Exhibition Walk-through: "Particular Histories"

We are thrilled to welcome our enthusiastic visitors once again to the Fowler’s innovative exhibitions! Spend some time in our galleries and enjoy that particular alchemy of art, people, and ideas mixing together in the physical space of the museum.

Join us for an exhibition walk-through with curator Carlee S. Forbes of our new exhibition, .

Provenance research (an investigation of an artwork’s past ownerships) traces the movement of a given object through different cultural, economic, and political contexts. Particular Histories presents five provenance case studies drawn from African material dating to the early 20th century that came to the Fowler Museum from the collection of Sir Henry Wellcome (1853–1936). The exhibition highlights recent findings—made through a combination of conservation, material science, archival research, and curatorial methods—that shed light on shifting perceptions of the objects’ value over time and offer some surprising revelations: from fictions concocted to assert certain works’ “authenticity” to new understanding of how some artists developed innovative designs tailored to local and foreign buyers.

Image: Unidentified artist (Akan, Ghana); Weight for measuring gold, before 1904; Copper alloy; Fowler Museum at UCLA, X65.9719; Gift of the Wellcome Trust

Host or Publisher Fowler Museum at UCLA