Simon Ottenberg: His Life and Legacy

Simon Ottenberg, Emeritus Professor at the University of Washington, died in Seattle on November 1, 2023 at the age of 100. He was an anthropologist, sailing enthusiast, collector, book seller, avid puzzler, and longtime supporter of contemporary arts from West Africa and the Pacific Northwest—and a fine, much-loved person. Ottenberg is well known as a distinguished anthropologist, yet he should be equally celebrated as a superlative art and culture historian. His keen insights into the arts of the Afikpo Igbo and the modern artists of the Nsukka group in Nigeria are known from his many books and articles about them, as well as his writing on art and music in the Bafodea chiefdom of Sierra Leone (Fig. 1). His concerns about Northwest Coast Salish artists of the Pacific Northwest of the United States and Canada, and his writing about and collections of their works, should be added to his African art credentials (see Falola 2006 for a compendium of Ottenberg's writings on art and culture, and a quite full bibliography of all his publications). Friends and colleagues alike valued Ottenberg's intellectual curiosity, witty sense of humor, and commitment to the artists and communities with whom he worked. We hope the essays and sidebar tributes in this special issue of African Arts provide a glimpse into Simon's professional career and personal impact.Africa was not Simon Ottenberg's first intellectual passion. As an adolescent, he wanted to be a polar explorer, although he didn't have a preference for the North or the South Pole. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology in 1948 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It was at Northwestern University, where he studied with the renowned anthropologist Melville Herskovits, that Ottenberg became interested in Africa. He pursued his doctoral research in Nigeria in the early 1950s, a time when many Americans knew little about the peoples and cultures of Africa. Ottenberg completed his PhD at Northwestern in 1957, having briefly taught anthropology at the University of Chicago in the spring of 1954 and Washington State College in Pullman in 1954-1955, then served in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington from 1955 until his retirement in 1990. He taught for a year as an honorary visiting professor at the University of Ghana, Legon (1970-1971), and was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom (1987-1988).Simon Ottenberg was a highly productive scholar. His publications on Africa's arts, religion, and social structure are voluminous, and late in life he was determined to publish all of his remaining research to stimulate future generations of scholars. Ottenberg recognized that with the passage of time, topics he left out of previous publications might gain relevance in light of current realities or the evolution of his own thought processes. He remained professionally active up to his 100th birthday with the release of two 2023 publications, Final African Papers of Simon Ottenberg and Imagined Tales from Southeastern Nigeria. A year earlier Ottenberg delved back into his 1978-1980 field notes and published Design and Music in a Changing Northern Sierra Leone Chiefdom (2022) in the hope of encouraging others to pursue research in Sierra Leone's Bafodea chiefdom. That same year, he shared reflections on his long career working in and writing about Africa's cultures and arts in Anthropologists in America Take a First Look at Africa (2022).Doctoral research in 1952-1953 led Simon Ottenberg to Nigeria's Afikpo Igbo region.1 While his early publications addressed more standard anthropological fare—kinship and social structure, political systems, religious beliefs and practices, and initiation rites—Ottenberg pivoted to focus on art and aesthetic systems that reflected the complexity of Africa's societies and fueled his abiding interest in artistic creativity and expressive culture. Simon the anthropologist became a fixture at scholarly meetings and panel presentations devoted to Africa's arts. His Masked Rituals of Afikpo: The Context of an African Art (1975) remains a classic reference for scholars and, as Sam Irem's tribute points out (p. 91, this issue), a source of cultural information and pride for members of Afikpo communities worldwide. Several of Ottenberg's publications emphasize the role of the arts in the education of Afikpo boys, which formed part of a 2004 exhibition on children's masquerades in Africa, jointly curated by Ottenberg and chief curator David A. Binkley for the National Museum of African Art. As Binkley points out in his reflections in this issue, the two significantly expanded upon the topic in their jointly edited volume, Playful Performers (2006).Ottenberg's deep knowledge of Afikpo arts is evident in his marvelous monograph Masked Rituals of Afikpo: The Context of an African Art, along with several articles that explore diverse aspects of Afikpo masking and other cultural forms. This and his many books and articles on Afikpo are based on his fieldwork in the early 1950s, before art historians had begun analogous research. His thorough, careful field research must owe something to Professor Melville Herskovits, who also trained other anthropologists (notably Justine Cordwell, Daniel Crowley, Warren D’Avezedo, James Fernandez, and Alan Merriam) to be keenly observant of the arts they encountered. Ottenberg supplemented that early pioneering work with later study visits to Afikpo. Thankfully, a compelling display of Afikpo masks is available at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), costumed and “in context”—or rather, in context to the extent possible in an art museum—that is explored in this issue by the SAM curator Pam McClusky, who worked to create this fine installation with Ottenberg and Sam Irem, a resident in the United States for many years.The book on Afikpo masks, masking ritual, and their social ramifications is among the very best monographs ever published on a specific African masking tradition. In fact, Afikpo has several distinct masking traditions, as the book makes clear. It is thorough and detailed, ranging from discussions of carvers to a full treatment of mask types and styles, as well as the varied ceremonies and “plays” in which Afikpo secret societies show their dramatic and social roles in community life. Men's secret societies, leadership, initiation, age and gender roles, music, dance, festivals, and village variations in masking are covered, along with deep explorations of several common, recurring masking contexts. Sixteen color plates, most with two to four images (over forty in total), along with sixty-eight black-and-white photographs illustrate all aspects of masking and other visual arts. Maps place the Afikpo among other southeastern Igbo peoples, along with details of village groups and a plan of one village. Historical changes in arts are covered in the book and in later articles, such as “We Are Becoming Art Minded: Afikpo Arts 1988” (Ottenberg 1989a), which charts differences that thirty-plus years have meant, especially in masquerades. It is hard to come up with another masquerade study that is as richly described and analyzed. Plus, the book is supplemented by a twenty-minute 16-millimeter color film, also shot in the 1950s. No masquerade can be well understood without the motions of dance and gesture caught on film (or video).There is little reason to review the masking book here, but it is important to highlight some of its more salient features and also briefly mention Ottenberg's further publications on Afikpo masking and other arts and aesthetics. The book is characterized by a blending of emic and etic perspectives. Clearly, Ottenberg had marvelous local sources with profound knowledge of art and ritual, including a master mask carver, his friend Chukwu Okoro (Figs. 2-3), and several elders who had participated in masking. Simon interpreted his observations and sessions with locals with remarkable insight, incorporating both their ideas and his own.We therefore have a full, chapter-long description of the complex “play” with many “stages” or segments, called Okumkpa, along with a comprehensive analysis in the following chapter. An Okumkpa performance in a village common (or plaza) is outlined, with its songs, dances, and other actions enumerated and later parsed. Interactions between leaders and chorus, between players and audience involve a kaleidoscope of varied masked characters: males and females of varied ages, local clerics and school agers, outsiders such as Muslims and Whites (Figs. 4-5), and others, including some animals. The plays’ content addresses four main topics: the ridicule of foolish people, gender roles, illness and misfortune, and both internal social relationships and relations with the outside world. Psychological factors in the masked play are also explored. Ottenberg saw these rich performances as accounting for the strength and enduring quality of masking in men's lives from preinitiation age into elderhood. In short, masking is about life in its countless ramifying aspects. One leitmotif is males acting as females—a constant in Afikpo (and other Igbo) masquerades—which affirms and reiterates male masculinity, one among many meanings.The book contains analogous explorations of other masking institutions, such as the Njenji parade, a procession of from several dozen to up to 150 varied masked characters of many types who walked from village to village (Fig. 6). The greatest stress is on varied female characters, especially the elaborately costumed “girl-spirits” (agbogho mma) who lead the procession. These masks are worn only by strong, tall men, so female impersonation is an important factor. Costume elements are borrowed from maskers’ wives, sisters, and girlfriends, another dynamic in the mix. Several other net and wood masks also appear, with cloth and raffia costumes, and there are masked characters of all ages, again emphasizing females.In another book, Playful Performers: African Children's Masquerades (Ottenberg and Binkley 2006), the jointly authored introduction illustrates the multiple ways that the visual, verbal, and performative arts are used to educate children into a peoples’ aesthetic concepts. Ottenberg's solo essay delves even more deeply than his earlier publications into the vital, ramifying educational components of Afikpo masquerades, noting that the boys’ societies emulated men's activities in many respects, including the scheduling of their masquerades to coincide with the men's ritual season (Ottenberg 2006: 124) (Figs. 7-8). Ottenberg's earlier book, Boyhood Rituals in an African Society: An Interpretation (1989b), had already introduced this topic. Male initiations, of course, are (or were) the “traditional” schooling of African youth.Ottenberg's meticulous details in describing and analyzing masking are remarkably insightful. He explores the social, political, educational, spiritual, and psychological dimensions of masking, all of which affirm the centrality of masking and its behaviors in Afikpo Igbo culture, at least in the second half of the twentieth century (and earlier). Humor and illusion in masking, the roles of audiences and performers in Afikpo, as well as the value of masquerades in the Afikpo knowledge system and world view are among the other topics he addresses.In a 1971 lecture at the University of Ghana, Legon, Ottenberg reflected on his work on Afikpo masked drama, noting that while he was “able to discover what masks were considered beautiful and what ones ugly, as the Afikpo saw them … I never really understood what they conceived beauty or ugliness to be” (Ottenberg 1971: 1-2). He concluded that he shared with other Western scholars an outsider's approach. More than a half-century before the commitment to restitution and repatriation of Africa's arts has become a moral imperative in Western museum practice to ensure collaboration in and access to research and museum collections, Ottenberg asserted, “The mask hanging in the European or American museum … is another kind of slave, taken from its natural setting and contributing largely to the West” (Ottenberg 1971: 3). He considered the limitations of the West with regards to terminology; a reliance on style and form rather than use, function, and meaning; and object categorizations (such as figures and masks, textiles, utensils, furniture, etc.) that overlooked African perspectives on typologies critical to understanding African aesthetic systems in context and as a process. Though he didn't specify it as such, Ottenberg urged for a team approach to research by those trained in a variety of fields, such as art history, anthropology, ethnomusicology, and dance ethnology, to name a few, in order “to see African aesthetic forms in all their aspects” (Ottenberg 1971: 5). Ottenberg's work consistently emphasized the fluid and changing nature of African aesthetic experience and the value of exploring how both ordinary and creative individuals have learned their aesthetic concepts—a topic that circles back to Ottenberg's interest in children's masquerades.While appreciative of Africa's “traditional” arts within their changing social contexts, Ottenberg was also drawn to the work of Africa's contemporary artists and the ideas and aesthetic systems that fueled their creative practice. A yearlong Smithsonian Regents Fellowship enabled Ottenberg to devote attention to Nigeria's Nsukka artists. This resulted in the 1997 publication New Traditions from Nigeria: Seven Artists from the Nsukka Group, the 1997-1998 exhibition The Poetics of Line at the National Museum of African Art (NMAfA), and the related conference volume, The Nsukka Artists and Nigerian Contemporary Art (2002).Ottenberg shied away from using the term “school” or “movement” in discussing Nsukka artists and their work because he felt that the artists were more loosely affiliated, and he avoided art historical terminology, which he thought did not fit many of the contexts of art production in Africa. He recognized, however, that the artists were connected to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, drew upon Igbo and other African cultures, and forged a continuity—not a break—with the past in their artistic practice.Ottenberg's selection of artists and artworks for the Nsukka project was not meant to be comprehensive; rather, he focused on just seven artists, which provided depth into their artistic practice over time. The vast majority of artworks chosen for the project were two-dimensional paintings and works on paper (Figs. 9-10), with many addressing social, economic, and political concerns of the day while also forming visual links with uli patterns familiar in body and mural painting in southeast Nigeria.2 However, as Iheanyichukwu Onwuegbucha points out (pp. 40-53, this issue), Ottenberg's emphasis on two-dimensional arts overlooked important three-dimensional works by Nsukka artists whose practice also clearly engages the of in uli as well as other Ottenberg the historical for modern and contemporary arts in Nigeria, emphasizing that the work of Nsukka artists reflected to that in their artistic practice. In up Nsukka artists and their Ottenberg recognized a approach in the work of an in Sierra caught Ottenberg's attention his research in the late among the who in the part of the He became with and the as an and who had access to art and the moral of Ottenberg's with in in the late and a later in where had remained with over the years and his publication A only monograph to on this pioneering Ottenberg a and historical and life in the context of with culture, Sierra Leone's and its cultures, and time in America and (Ottenberg color and black-and-white of and that for of on Sierra Leone's history, culture, and social (Ottenberg the of the also arts, on that were available in also such as with its to masquerades, and with its and … to the of and a or (Ottenberg Ottenberg recognized that artistic practice was in this of (Ottenberg and that characterized the of Sierra Leone as well as modern and contemporary art on the African and with his to intellectual and aesthetic in future Ottenberg that his art research field and other within and to scholarly and his field notes to his Northwestern and from Nigeria, which Ottenberg from the early to the in and was about his as African and American contemporary artists and also as a to the of and contexts of Africa's “traditional” or arts that he his fieldwork and on the African The Ottenberg's object to the Art Museum which a of and arts from Sierra Leone that he his 1978-1980 research in the Bafodea chiefdom. interest are his early in Nigeria of Afikpo masks, including an initiation mask (Fig. of a worn by Igbo for in In Ottenberg an mask from Afikpo Chukwu Okoro that it was never used in an Afikpo the mask has in the United He also of Nigerian masks and other that on the art in Nigeria and common that Ottenberg's interest in American and African contemporary arts is the in which artists upon cultural traditions, including the visual, and arts, as sources of As a friend to so many artists, Ottenberg their work works on was deeply appreciative of the aesthetic of Coast Salish artists from the Pacific those working in and where he for more than half a The Museum of and at the University of Washington an works on paper by Coast Salish and other American by Ottenberg over a of years (Fig. As by the collections (p. this issue), the Ottenberg provide an enduring visual on the and aesthetic by American artists in their creative practice. and scholar of American (pp. this how Ottenberg formed a with Coast Salish also known as A. and insights into the life and work and over the Ottenberg worked with the of the late to the publication The and of a Coast Salish which explored paintings and that The Ottenberg's research on Coast Salish as well as from on contemporary Northwest Coast American artists and their collections of the Seattle Art Museum have by that Ottenberg over the including a of Afikpo masks (see and over one works on paper by American among many SAM also an Afikpo masquerade in the museum as Ottenberg in collaboration with his Afikpo Sam Pam on the of this and its among museum who the masquerades their visits to the museum (pp. this Museum of strength in modern and contemporary African art was by Ottenberg's of works by artists from The a by Museum of Art as well as works on paper by artists with the and Nsukka (Fig. two dozen works were in The Art of The Simon Ottenberg of and Contemporary Nigerian Art, curated by in collaboration with art of The New the it in but in history, a that New museum In (pp. this on the of this to the Museum of Art and the community it Ottenberg's to the National Museum of African Art, where he research year from the The art received paper (Fig. and and from Sierra The Warren a comprehensive of his As by (pp. this issue), the Ottenberg's field photographs from Nigeria and Sierra which as to the he on field photographs in and understanding the evolution of Africa's arts and cultures over was the of research and by the the National the and the National in the In he received a of from the University of Nigeria. Ottenberg was the Smithsonian for He served as of the African and was also on the of the Arts of the African In Ottenberg received in of his research and publications on the Ottenberg was of an or Afikpo an on in Nigeria in in and celebrated in in at the by the Afikpo In Ottenberg was with their of that is for those who have the of for the It the Ottenberg provided over to members of the Afikpo community in Nigeria and the United In the Ottenberg that as a American anthropologist, he was very in Afikpo, and he those in to upon the that of in a and devoted group of and some of including from in Seattle in 2023 to his 100th It was a with tributes by from Nigeria and Sierra Leone who how Simon's enabled them and their to lives in the United States and to their communities back Simon Ottenberg be (Fig.