L’Empire du non-sens: L’Art et la societé technicienne by Jacques Ellul (review)

152 Rooks The Museum Educator'.y Manual is a directory of children's education programs of 126 American Art museums, 101 general museums, 55 history museums. 24 science museums, and 12 children's museums. A three-year survey by the staff of the Brockton (Massachusetts, U.S.A.) Art Center-Fuller Memorial, a small community art museum, collected a variety of descriptive information, which appears in chart form as the book's major content. There are data on each museum's yearly attendance and the income and educational levels of its constituents: the age, funding sources,audience and staff of its educationdepartment: and additional documentation of the existence of docent programs, children's museum tours. pre- and post-visit enhancement. schoolrelated educational programs, and features of children's exhibits. The names, addresses, and telephone numbers ofeach museum participating in the survey appear in an index, to enable readers to contact museums with programs of interest for more specific information. The potential helpfulness of the Manual is limited by the unevenly distributed sample of museums surveyed. While data appear on 318 museums from 46 states, 146come from only eight states. and 94 of these are from California, Massachusetts (home of the Brockton Art Center) and New York. The other fivestates in this group(Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Texas) have an average of 14 museums each. The remaining 36 states are represented by an average of only four museums apiece. With such a limited and spotty sample. and because the museums listed represent voluntary respondents, the museums indexed in many cases are not descriptive of their regions. The Manual makes little attempt to compare the children's education programs of art museums with those of the other museums surveyed, although such information is available in the data and would be interesting despite the limitations of the survey. While many American museums have acknowledged their educational function since their beginnings, the image of the art museum as an appropriate setting for the education of school children has caught the public eye particularly during the last 15 years. The Brockton project correctly aims to help this audience, but it offers less substance than they require. Yoruba Beadwork: Art of Nigeria. William Fagg. Rizzoli. New York. 1980. 99 pp.. illus. Paper, $15.95. ISBN: 0-8478-0322-8. Reviewed by Carson 1. A. Ritchie* William Fagg's text and John Pemberton's ca1aIogue raisonnP form an admirable introduction to what is surely the least known of all African arts. Yoruba beadwork corresponds to Red Indian wampum. at the point when the last hand wampum makers abandoned work and the wampum market was flooded with millions of glass beads. Yoruba bead matting was made from the identical kindofbeads used in America, tiny "seed beads'' two millimetres in size. The fact that the two art forms developed so differently is largely due to the religious inspiration associated with Yoruba work, an inspiration in which conviction was still very much alive. John Pemberton's choice of pictures emphasizes the sacred nature of the art. He has produced, from a wide range of private collections, galleries and religious treasuries, breathtakingly beautiful pictures of objects which all have some cult significance. The photography and printing enhance these images of witch doctors' vestments and paraphenalia, dance panels for sacramental dances, receptacles for images of the gods and monuments to the dead. The fact that the largest category of objects on display. chiefs' caps and robes, appears to be secular is actually misleading. The chief was a god-king, and everything he wore or handled both emphasised his divine calling and added to his spiritual force. The sacerdotal nature of beadwork is also emphasized by Fagg in the text. He traces the associations of beadwork with the sacred chieftaincy and local cults back to mediaeval times, and even produces specimensof eighteenth centurv work, carried out in the coral and carnelian which preceded glass. Yoruba beadwork was able to survive because it was one of the few African art forms which would not make a tasty mouthful for the white ants and because its possessors, witch doctors and chiefs. were persons treated with awesome respect. Nothing issacred toacollector. however. and local treasures...