The African Art Museum of The SMA Fathers

Want to see some wonderful African art? Then head to Tenafly, New Jersey where a small museum dedicated to African art is located on a quiet suburban street. At The African Art Museum of The SMA Fathers you’ll find textiles, ceremonial masks, sculpture, woodcarvings and other objects from its permanent collection that the museum rotates from time to time.

Established in 1980, the museum is an outgrowth of the work of the SMA Fathers, a Catholic missionary group whose missions are located in Ghana, Liberia, Kenya, Tanzania and the US. The museum is one of five in the world dedicated to “…respect & preserve the culture of the peoples…” that SMA serves. (see website) Objects have been donated by various collectors and according to information written by Fr. Thomas Wright on the museum’s website, the goal is to showcase quality African art. Pieces in the collection come from Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, the Guinea Coast, Sudan and Cameroon.


There are traditional Yoruba woodcarvings that are decidedly Christian in their depiction and illumination of religious references.





Statues of spirit lovers from the Baule people of the Ivory Coast are on display. According to Baule tradition, each person has an earthly lover and a spirit lover. Difficulties in a marriage were thought to occur when the spirit lover was displeased and to remedy the couple’s problems its statue would be placed near the couple’s bed. Improbably and surprisingly, even though the Ivory Coast was a French colony, one of these statues in the group displayed is a brass statue cast as Charles DeGaulle in uniform.

The masks are fascinating and diverse in style. Some like the masks of Mali’s Dogon people worn by male dancers during religious ceremonies held before the entire village are almost abstract and indeed, otherworldly. They look neither human nor animal. To the Dogon, the masks embody the spirits and those spirits pass through into the bodies of the dancers during the ceremony.




















Unlike the masks of the Dogon, the masks from Burkina Faso represent nature spirits with painted rings encircling the eyes to give the masks an intense look. The masks are worn on top of the head or on the forehead.





































The masks of Liberia can be either beautiful with human faces


















or terrifying with bits of metal and hair incorporated into their design.










































There are examples of twin statues decorated with beads and shells and other finery thought by the Yoruba of Nigeria to protect a living twin from sickness and being called to the spirit world to be rejoined with its dead twin. Called the “cult of ibeji” these twin statues and their adoration stem from the high rate of twin births and infant mortality found among the Yoruba.

























Visitors to the museum are especially in luck because in addition to the art there is another gem found in the museum: the explanatory material written by the museum’s director, Robert J. Koenig. Sometimes, museum information about what’s on display can be dry and ho-hum or simply not much more than a label. Mr. Koenig does not merely identify an object and its source. He explains its significance within each culture in an engaging, articulate and informative style. His writing and depth of knowledge makes you stop and read each and every card. Mr. Koenig educates. You leave the museum with vivid images of African art and knowledge of African cultures.

The museum is open 7 days a week from 10 am to 5 pm.

Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum

Whaling? In a small town on the north shore of Long Island, New York? Yes and yes! Whalers departed from Cold Spring Harbor to begin whale hunting trips on the open sea that could sometimes take up to four to five years. These whaling brigs were factory ships that processed, at sea, huge whale carcasses, extracting whale oil used to light homes and lubricate machines. When a whale was sighted, a 30 foot whaleboat with a six man crew was lowered into the water and the hunt was on in earnest. The crew's job was to harpoon the whale, kill it and tow it back to the whaler.



The Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum has, as the centerpiece of its collection, one of 10 remaining whaleboats left in the United States. This nineteenth century whaleboat belonged to one of America's last whaling brigs, the Daisy. The Daisy Whaleboat, made of white oak and cedar is fully equipped with all its original tools used on the hunt from harpoons and lances to ropes and much more. The whaleboat was last used in 1912 and is in great shape. Surrounding the whaleboat are photos of the crew at work taken by Robert Murphy, a scientist who sailed aboard the Daisy during its 1912-1913 trip. Murphy was also a catalyst in founding the museum. He donated the Daisy whaleboat to the town of Cold Spring Harbor with the proviso that they build a whaling museum around it.

A film shown at the museum documents the whale hunt from start to finish with vintage footage. The museum also has on display a huge try pot used to melt blubber into oil as well as many examples of sailors' scrimshaw and other items pertinent to whaling.

The Whitaker Museum & the Museo Saline Ettore e Inferza

Just before a trip to Sicily in 2009, I read Francine Prose’s, Sicilian Odyssey,* filled with her impressions of and experiences in Sicily. It was in chapter 7, "The Wonders of the World", that I first learned of the Greek statue “Il Giovanetto di Mozia” (Young Man of Mozia). Mozia, now called San Pantaleo, is the ancient name for the tiny island off the coast between Trapani and Marsala. You have to take a small ferry boat to get there and it’s well worth the trip. The statue is in the small Whitaker Museum. So on a very windy, cold day I found myself on Mozia.

According to my Lonely Planet guidebook on Sicily written by Vesna Maric, James Whitaker bought the island, built a villa there and also indulged in his interest in archaeology. Mozia, it turned out was a Phoenician settlement and Whittaker uncovered an impressive amount of Phoenician artifacts that are on display in the museum.


Maric also points out that it is the “…best-preserved Phoenician site in the world as the Romans utterly destroyed Carthage…” (p. 120). This is so typical of Sicily where there is so much history to be uncovered. Greeks, Normans, Spaniards, North Africans and others all were forces on the island and traces of their cultures are still here to see.

But it is the statue, Il Giovanetto di Mozia that is the gem here. It is of an androgenous, young man with hand on hip wearing a clinging and revealing garment made of some almost diaphanous fabric. As Prose writes, “…we stop short in front of the ‘Ephebus of Mozia,’ the fifth-century B.C. statue so arresting and shockingly beautiful that it occurs to me that, two hours from now, the ferry could return and find us still standing here, staring at the sculpture.”(p.98)

As she states, “There is nothing anywhere like the ‘Young Man of Mozia’. (p.99) Prose is absolutely right on both counts! I’m so glad I read this book before I went to Sicily. I would have missed this museum and its gem.

*Sicilian Odyssey by Francine Prose (2003) is part of the National Geographic Directions series written by respected authors. A smattering of authors who have written for this series are Jamaica Kincaid (Nepal), Louise Erdrich (Ontario), Susanna Moore (Hawaii), Oliver Sacks (Oaxaca) and William Least Heat-Moon (Western Ireland).



Steps from where the ferry docks on the mainland, is the Museo Saline Ettore e Inferza, a museum about the sea salt industry of the area. The museum is housed in a converted windmill that grinds the salt. Tools used to extract the salt from the water are on display as well as a fascinating film about how salt is harvested from the rectangular lagoons of water visible along the coast. Well worth a visit!















I was in Sicily in late April and early May and although the weather we encountered at the beginning of our trip was rainy, cold and windy the incredible wildflower display that colors the landscape in spring made up for any hardship. Flowers of every color and variety sometimes commingled and sometimes growing alone made us stop and marvel at their beauty.

John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art

If you’re ever in Sarasota, Florida visit the John and Mable Ringling Art Museum. It’s really more than one museum and hard to see in an afternoon. One afternoon was all I had so I just had time to visit the Ringlings’ fantasy Venetian palazzo and the Circus Museum leaving the Art Museum with its collection of Old Masters and the miniature circus exhibit for another visit. I love things that are a study in contrast and I love things that give us a peek into another, world different from our own. The Ringling fit the bill.



The Ca d’Zan, the Ringlings’ Italianate mansion has a wide terrace that ends at Sarasota Bay, panoramic views and opulent rooms (including guest bathroom medicine chest doors and bedroom closet doors that when opened greet guests with graceful paintings on their other sides) but my favorite was the artwork of illustrator William Pogany visible in John Ringling’s game room on the top floor and in the ballroom downstairs. Full of energy and riotous, vibrant color the fantastical creatures and clowns cover the vaulted ceiling and support columns of the game room and dancers, dressed in foreign costumes, dance on the ceiling of the ballroom downstairs. They’re quite a contrast to the rest of the house.

Learn all about the circus and The Ringling Bros. Circus, in particular, at The Circus Museum. I found the photographs that documented how the big top went up in each small town it played in fascinating. They would start in the morning and have it up and ready for the two o’clock performance in the afternoon. The elephants even helped! Often the circus played just one day in each town so after the day’s performance the big top was dismantled and they moved onto the next town where the whole process was begun again. I also found intriguing how the five Ringling brothers ran their business. The majority was never in the right automatically. Instead if one or two of them had an idea that the rest were not too keen on, the majority argued their position. If the minority held firm then the majority acquiesced and the idea was implemented. Circus posters, clown cars, costumes, etc. are all here but I really wish there was a big top with all the sights and sounds of that old time circus.