Background and Overview:
In 1963, Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy consolidated major ethnographic collections at UCLA into a single institution. Later, the UCLA anthropology department transferred its archaeological holdings to the museum—first called the Laboratory of Ethnic Arts and Technology and founded to study the arts and cultures of Africa, Native and Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific. Following a succession of name changes, including the Museum of Cultural History and Fowler Museum of Cultural History, it became the Fowler Museum at UCLA in 2006. Currently, its holdings consist of over 130,000 artworks and cultural objects, and over 1,000 accessioned archaeological collections covering thousands of years of human history. The breadth of the collections has enabled the Fowler Museum to produce groundbreaking exhibitions and award-winning publications. Engagement with represented communities and thorough provenance research are the museum’s guiding principles for collections management and curatorial practices. The museum is dedicated to continued ethical care of its holdings by standards that honor the objects, as well as their makers and descendants.
African Collections:
The Fowler Museum’s African arts collection—one of the largest in the United States—encompasses metalwork, wood carvings, textiles, musical instruments, popular urban arts, and ceramics. These arts come from throughout the African continent and span millennia, reflecting the vibrancy and diversity of arts in nearly every region of the continent. Large portions come from Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, and South Africa. Among the strengths in the museum’s collection are: Yoruba style arts, Kuba and Lega style arts, Senegalese and Ghanaian popular arts, ironwork from West and Central Africa, and the collection from Askut, Sudan. The provenance histories of these works range broadly, from objects collected during the colonial period by tourists, administrators, missionaries, soldiers, and others, to arts that were field collected, archaeologically excavated, or commissioned during the colonial and post-colonial eras. The depth and breadth of this corpus—in terms of geography, time periods, and provenance—speak to the complex history associated with African art collecting.
Americas Collection:
The museum maintains a significant representation of Los Angeles history focused on Gabrielino/Tongva and Chumash material culture, as well as additional holdings from Native American communities across the United States. Arts of the ancient Americas include collections from West Mexico, the Valley of Mexico, and Peru. An unknown number of these objects were looted, but the museum also maintains major collections of materials from officially sanctioned archaeological excavations in the Americas. Notable holdings of modern/contemporary-era arts (post-1900) include arts produced by the Warao and Yecuana peoples of Venezuela; Guatemalan, Mexican and Panamanian traditional arts, including regional dress, ceramics, festival masks, and religious objects; and significant works by African diasporic communities in the Americas, especially Haitian (Vodou) and Afro-Brazilian (Candomblé) sacred arts, and Afro-Surinamese textiles and woodcarving.
Asian and Oceanic Collections:
Representing a dynamic range of arts and craftsmanship found across Asia, the Fowler Museum has significant examples of visual and material cultures of these regions. Among the largest in the United States, the collections from Insular Southeast Asia include textiles and basketry from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste; sculptural material from Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi West Timor (Indonesia), Luzon (Philippines), and Timor-Leste; puppetry theater arts from Java and Bali (Indonesia); and metalwork from the Philippines. The primary strength of the Oceanic collections lies in materials from Australia, Papua New Guinea, especially the Papuan Gulf, Trobriand Islands, Sepik River, and Maprik region. Additional collections include textiles from Japan, India, and Bhutan; basketry and decorative arts from Japan; puppets from China, Thailand, and India; field-collected materials from Nepal; and domestic objects from Iran, Armenia, Syria, and other Middle Eastern countries.
European Collections:
Although the museum focuses on the art from the continents listed above, the holdings also include European 16th to 19th century silver decorative arts donated by its namesake, Francis E. Fowler; neolithic tools; and a variety of textiles and folk arts, mostly from Southeastern Europe.