Extracted from: Museum Ethnographers Group newsletter (Hull, England) no. 21, 1987, pages 6-18.
How does a Western art historian teach African art to first-year university students? How does he approach the material and present it to students who come with no prior knowledge of African art or come burdened with the cultural prejudice that it isn't art at all. Helsop recounts how he attempted to overcome this wall of skepticism, using two Yoruba objects from the Sainsbury collection - - a Shango staff and an Ifa divination bowl. He and the students analyzed these two objects visually to get at the underlying aesthetics. Helsop concludes from this experience that African art objects are displayed in museums in a way that "negates their aesthetic qualities and suggests that they are different in essence from Western objects" (page 16), thus reinforcing ethnocentric views of "otherness."
