Summer is known as group show season, but currently two veteran galleries are working together as a new ‘group’, teaming up to co-host a thematic exhibition of African fetish art that explores the complex role of fetish in traditional African culture.

Douglas Dawson Gallery and Rhona Hoffman Gallery present Keeping Secrets: The Fetish in African Art through May 30. This collegial exchange joins Dawson’s reputation as an expert on ancient and ethnographic arts with Hoffman’s status as one of the top contemporary art dealers in the world. 

The show’s approximately 50 objects and textiles are mainly from West and Central Africa and include both figurative and abstract sculpture, masks, ceramics, textiles and iron and copper alloy pieces used in divination. Interest in African art has evolved from the exclusive domain of anthropologists and African art historians to a much broader audience that includes those interested in contemporary art. 

Fetish objects on view at Rhona Hoffman    

Fetish-related textiles are at Douglas Dawson