Intersections: World Arts, Local Lives is the first long-term exhibition featuring the Fowler's permanent holdings of world arts. The 250 works are primarily from Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Americas and they range in date from the third millennium b.c.e. to the present.  These works of art were selected on the basis of their exceptional artistic merit as well as the many ways they conceptually intersect with each other. The objects on view have all intervened in the lives of people who made or used them — whether to educate, solve problems, asset leadership, assist in remembering, or provision loved ones in the afterlife.

Intersections is organized thematically and has four principal galleries [view a Flash slideshow of galleries].
Each explores specific ways that works of art intersect with people’s lives.

Through selected works in ART and ACTION a key idea is presented — that artistry and aesthetic presence are critical to an object’s effectiveness. The beliefs and concepts that give objects power and meaning in turn dictate their aesthetic appearance. In other words, how art looks has much to do with how it works. The next section ART and KNOWLEDGE presents works that are bearers of knowledge, intended to encode, protect, or communicate information. They play critical roles in the perpetuation of traditions and teachings that are passed from generation to generation, teacher to student, performer to audience. The works in ART and POWER explore how art plays integral roles in defining and asserting power. Objects not only augment political authority, but also ensure control over the environment, negotiate gender, or express status and prestige. In the final section ART and TRANSFORMATION the works featured were made to assist with life’s transitions and transformations. Some were used by individuals seeking spiritual intervention, others eased the experience of death and the transition of the deceased to an afterlife, and still others were made by contemporary artists to comment on the social, political, and cultural transformations occurring around them.

Explore artwork:

In the center of Intersections is the FOWLER IN FOCUS gallery, which features recent acquisitions, selected artistic genres, and engaging thematic topics.

Currently on View:
Fowler in Focus: Masks of Sri Lanka
March 1 to August 30, 2009

Brightly painted wooden masks transform Sri Lankan dancers into specific characters that appear in curing rituals or popular entertainment. Ranging from comical to fierce, these unusual masks have long played an important role in performance genres that were created through the mixing of local indigenous religious traditions with strains of Buddhism and Hinduism originally imported from the Indian mainland in the first millennium BCE. The Fowler Museum collections include the most important assemblage of nineteenth and early twentieth century Sri Lankan masks in North America. Fowler in Focus: Masks of Sri Lanka presents twenty-five of these rare masks, as well as newly produced masks representing Singhaya (lion) and Mahasona (Great Graveyard Spirit) in full costume.

Explore artwork: