the Fowler years

Doran H. Ross
His Fabulous Fowler Years

Marla C. Berns

I strongly believe that the best exhibitions are those that actively
intervene in people’s thinking about the world around them.
The creation and presentation of art should make a positive
difference in our relationships with the rest of the planet.
—Doran H. Ross, 19981

Doran H. Ross had a long and distinguished

engagement with the Fowler Museum, 是-
ginning in the late 1970s when it was called
the UCLA Museum of Cultural History and
was housed in the basement of Haines Hall.
他, along with his mentor and UCSB grad-
uate school advisor, 赫伯特 (Skip) 中号. Cole, co-curated the 1977
landmark traveling exhibition The Arts of Ghana, which set a stan-
dard for focused exhibitions concentrating on a single geographic
area or a specific ethnic group (and was only the second major
African exhibition in the museum’s history, following on Black
Gods and Kings: Yorùbá Art at UCLA in 1971). As Cole notes in
his essay in this issue, the project was a mammoth undertaking,
featuring more than 600 objects borrowed from 102 museums and
private collections. This is something I cannot fathom, even having
participated in organizing large and complex exhibitions at the
Fowler for twenty years. This maiden project set the stage for what
I have always thought one of Doran’s guiding principles: “More is
more is even more.” Additionally, the project pioneered an inter-
pretive strategy that became a Fowler trademark: the incorpora-
tion of film, 视频, slide shows, and photographs to contextualize
objects and their original users, 创客, 目的, and meanings.
The Arts of Ghana was also accompanied by the most comprehen-
sive multiauthor publication the museum had produced to date
(Cole and Ross 1977), and it was the first exhibition the Fowler
traveled. I wonder whether Doran understood then the auspi-
ciousness of his decision to accompany Skip Cole to Ghana and to
tackle an exhibition whose monumental success set the stage for
his and the museum’s future.

Marla C. Berns is the Shirley and Ralph Shapiro Director Emerita of the Fowler
Museum at UCLA. Her publishing and curatorial work concentrates on women’s
arts of Northeastern Nigeria and encompasses ceramic sculpture, decorated gourds,
programs of body scarification, and issues of gender and identity. She was the proj-
ect director of the Fowler’s 2018–2020 international traveling exhibition Striking
Iron: The Art of African Blacksmiths, for which she also was co-curator as well
as coeditor and contributing author to the accompanying publication. 在 2013
she received the medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters of the French
共和国. She received the ACASA Leadership Award in 2021. She has been on the
African Arts editorial board since 2001. berns@arts.ucla.edu

32 | african arts SPRING 2022 VOL. 55, NO. 1

Installation view of The Essential Gourd:
1
African Art from the Obvious to the Ingenious, 1986.
Wight Art Gallery, UCLA.
照片: Unknown photographer, courtesy of the
Fowler Museum at UCLA

This view shows how a gourd made by each of
the various peoples of the Lower Gongola Valley
was “mapped” onto the gallery wall to illustrate
their stylistic distinctions and relationships.

When I first met Doran in 1978 in a storeroom in Haines Hall
he was a visiting curator and he had already moved on to another
exhibition project, much smaller in scope but no less important in
terms of its original research and insights, elaborating on one of
the art forms introduced in The Arts of Ghana. Fighting with Art:
Appliquéd Flags of the Fante Asafo was scheduled for the museum’s
modest Haines Hall Gallery 2 在 1979 as part of a series of stu-
dent-produced projects the museum had launched with funding
from the Ahmanson Foundation and the National Endowment
for the Humanities. At the same time, I was preparing my first
Fowler exhibition on the museum’s Yorùbá collection as part of my
year-long graduate student internship. Mine was set to open two
months earlier than Doran’s in the same gallery and my publica-
tion was Volume 1, 数字 4 in the UCLA Museum of Cultural
History Pamphlet Series while his was Volume 1, 数字 5. 这
may have been the only time I was one step ahead of him! As so
many others have mentioned in their essays, initial encounters
with Doran remain unforgettable, in part because of his imposing
stature but also because even on a casual basis he made a connec-
tion and left a strong impression. I can still picture him coming
into that classroom-cum-storeroom while I sat at my tiny study
carrel and we shared information about our respective projects
and decision to pursue research on the arts of Africa.

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Installation view of The Essential Gourd:
2
African Art from the Obvious to the Ingenious,
1986. Wight Art Gallery, UCLA.
照片: Unknown photographer, courtesy of the
Fowler Museum at UCLA

3 Doran modeling the Nigerian deco-
rated gourd I gave him, C. 1987. Such gourds
could be strapped around a mother’s back
to serve as sun bonnets, shielding the heads
of babies.
照片: Marla C. Berns

It is not surprising that in 1981 Doran became the museum’s as-
sociate director and curator of Africa, Southeast Asia, and Oceanic
Arts on the basis of these two earlier projects despite not having
had any other formal museum training. 清楚地, he had proven
himself as a fine young scholar and thoughtful curator and one with
a proven capacity to manage the complex logistical details of orga-
nizing a major exhibition, producing scholarly essays, and using
astute judgment in identifying works to build the collections. 这
museum took a chance and won. Doran was in the right place at
the right time and also was the absolute right person for a museum
that had been established with a clear global mandate, an emphasis
on interdisciplinarity, and an openness to new approaches for in-
terpreting art and material culture. It suited his temperament and
boundless intellectual curiosity to be free of the rigid constraints of
either an anthropology museum or an art museum, but rather to
participate in shaping one dedicated to cultural history writ large,
with a young staff committed to refining and expanding the mu-
seum’s mission and priorities. Doran inherited the legacy of two

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adventurous curatorial predecessors—Ralph Altman and George
右. Ellis—and found a willing and enthusiastic partner in the mu-
seum’s faculty director, Christopher Donnan, an Andean archaeol-
ogist. Together they pursued the important priorities of organizing
exhibitions and producing scholarly publications, building an au-
dience for the museum on and off campus, and working toward
moving the museum out of its rudimentary classroom digs (和
borrowed exhibition space across campus) into a purpose-built
facility that could house its burgeoning collections and distinctive
programmatic mandate.

When I returned to Los Angeles in 1984 after completing my dis-
sertation research in Northeastern Nigeria, I went to visit my friends
at the Fowler and to discuss the disposition of some of the objects
I had collected in the field, for which I was seeking an institutional

VOL. 55, NO. 1 SPRING 2022 african arts | 33

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home. As a student of the late UCLA art historian Arnold Rubin,
who had already donated much of what he had collected in the
Benue River Valley to the museum, I knew that my collection would
complement his. At this point Doran had already overseen the im-
plementation of Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos (a second major
endeavor initiated by Herbert M. Cole with Chike G. Aniakor) 和
was actively nurturing other new projects, especially those, 像
one on the Igbo, that drew on new field research. Meeting with
Doran about my nearly three years of fieldwork led to an invitation
that I organize a small exhibition for Gallery 2 to coincide with the
1986 ACASA Triennial at UCLA, to be hosted by the Museum of
Cultural History. The project would be based around the women’s
art of decorating gourds that I had researched among more than
twenty-five different peoples living across the Lower Gongola Valley
(如图. 1). An exhibition and book, The Essential Gourd: Art and
History in Northeastern Nigeria (Berns and Hudson 1986) 会
combine my early 1980s research with that done by Rubin’s wife
Barbara in 1969 和 1971. I paused writing my dissertation so I
could dive into the rich data, 照片, and films I had collected
about this tradition, which had flourished to a remarkable degree in
this region and was as yet very little known. Barbara Rubin Hudson
had already given a collection of these gourds to the museum, 和我
was facilitating a donation of mine as well. As many others describe
in their essays here, Doran’s management style was to let the curato-
rial process unfold and to participate by encouraging a creative and
improvisational outcome.

34 | african arts SPRING 2022 VOL. 55, NO. 1

4 Doran Ross and Christopher
Donnan in the new Fowler Museum
of Cultural History offices, 1993.
照片: Unknown photographer, courtesy
of Betsy D. Quick

5 Elephant shrine in Doran’s office,
加州. 1992.
照片: Unknown photographer, courtesy
of Betsy D. Quick

My modest assignment became a large one when the main exhi-
bition commissioned for the 1986 ACASA Triennial did not ma-
terialize, and we shifted gears to filling a space nearly three times
that of Gallery 2! This allowed for Doran’s “more is more” dictum
to reign supreme and soon we were looking at every African gourd
in the Fowler’s holdings, surprising ourselves with what we found,
and creating a second exhibition that featured everything from mu-
sical instruments, smoking pipes, beaded regalia, and more from
across the continent (如图. 2). We drove up the California coast to
Paso Robles to visit Al and Edna Heer’s Pumpkin Farm and Gourd
Place to source examples of the many Lagenaria siceraria shapes
they grew related to African cultigens; several were installed on the
exhibition’s dynamic entry wall. We both also discovered the many
ways “crafters” were turning gourds into cute ducks, penguins, 和
更多的, which Doran called “gourd abuse.” Our project would be a

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Hudson on the gourds from Northeastern Nigeria, was made re-
warding with Doran’s input, sense of fun, and wordplay (如图. 3),
as was the chance to work closely with Betsy D. Quick (director
of education) and other museum staff on an in-depth interpretive
presentation. Doran’s instincts about the appeal of an exhibition
featuring such humble but gloriously ornamented objects from a
remote part of Nigeria were certainly spot-on, and the exhibition
garnered a five-venue tour and the publication was reprinted to
serve the expanded audience.

I was not the only graduate student Doran entrusted with an
effort of this magnitude, and it is a testament to his openness and
generosity that he gave us such opportunities so early in our ca-
reers. 毕竟, he had been given the same chance at the beginning
of his, and he had already established a paradigm for exhibition de-
velopment that incorporated new and exciting field research, fresh
interpretive perspectives, and a choice of subjects and genres that
pushed beyond the typical emphasis on the “fine art masterpiece”
that dominated most American museum programming. Director
Christopher Donnan, who as a UCLA professor divided his time
among teaching, archaeological research, and Fowler oversight,
gave space for Doran to supervise the museum’s day-to-day oper-
ations and promote its ambitious, innovative programming (如图.
4). As several authors in this issue attest, Doran was masterful at
intuiting the potential of particular exhibition ideas, whether of
his own origination or those of colleagues he knew and respected,
and then equally adept at finding the support and resources
to make them happen.

Knowing Doran well in those early years of his tenure in the
1980s, I was stunned by his work ethic and long 12-hour days. 他
started at 5 am and left at 5 pm, enjoying the quiet of the morning
hours and the chance to confer with colleagues on the east coast.
He rarely ate lunch and once he left the office for home chose not
to rehash the day but rather to relax with a tall gin and tonic and
to think. He had an incredible capacity to focus and to be present
100%, and it was this skill that enabled him to accomplish so much
and set a pace and level of performance far beyond what would be
expected for a museum of the Fowler’s modest size.

During this same early period, UCLA’s administration, 尤其
Chancellor Charles E. Young and Vice Chancellor for Institutional

corrective to what Americans knew about gourds (or calabashes)
and reveal their remarkable transformation by African artists. 我们
renamed the two-part exhibition: The Essential Gourd: African Art
from the Obvious to the Ingenious. The intense work of getting this
all done in the short time we had, including a lengthy compan-
ion volume I authored with the contributions of Barbara Rubin

6 Doran riding Dumbo in his office,
加州. 1992.
照片: Unknown photographer, courtesy of
Betsy D. Quick

Johannes Segogela (乙. 1936, 南

7
非洲)
Apartheid’s Funeral (1994)
Wood, paint; dimensions variable
Fowler Museum at UCLA, X94.31.1-
27; Gift of Patricia Altman in Memory
of Franklin D. 墨菲, Chancellor of
UCLA, 1960–1968.
照片: Don Cole, courtesy of the Fowler
Museum at UCLA.

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VOL. 55, NO. 1 SPRING 2022 african arts | 35

Relations Elwin Swenson (to whom the Fowler reported), 制成
building a permanent home for the museum a priority, sharing this
goal when they appointed Donnan to be director in 1975. 之后,
when Doran joined Chris Donnan in this effort, the two began the
process of crafting a program to guide the design of the new build-
英, a strategy for meeting its fundraising goals and challenges
(studies reported it couldn’t be done), a plan to implement a digital
database for the collection in anticipation of moving it, and estab-
lishing a blueprint for an inaugural suite of four exhibitions to fill
its new galleries (each with its own publication). I think it is fair to
say that the outsize plans for the opening program rested on the
goal of signaling a new identity and role for the Fowler Museum of
Cultural History on the UCLA campus. When it officially opened
在九月 1992, Chancellor Young called it “the premier cul-
tural facility in the Los Angeles area dedicated to non-Western ar-
tistic traditions” (Muchnic 1992: 5). In a review in the Los Angeles
时代, art critic William Wilson (1993) described the new building
as “space to spread its riches and show what it can really do as an
institution of national and international significance.”

Among the four opening exhibitions, the largest and most ex-
pansive was Elephant: The Animal and Its Ivory in African Culture,
which Doran curated as part of a broad cross-cultural, interdisci-
plinary collaboration, funded with a major grant from the National
人文学科捐赠 (和别的). Conversations about
this exhibition dated back to 1985, when Doran spoke with col-
leagues Skip Cole and Arnold Rubin about a project that would
explore “the relationship of animals to the material culture, 艺术, 和
ritual of Africa” (Ross 1992: xx). They discussed certain criteria
for determining the choice of animals to feature and the require-
ment that their presence extend to a range of African cultures. 作为

Doran reflected on these discussions, “Significantly, the elephant
was not included, losing out to the leopard as a representative of
Mammalia” (Ross 1992: xx). 基本上, the elephant was “too cute,”
given all the ways it conjured up Dumbo, Jumbo, and Babar. 但,
upon further reflection, the huge animal’s extraordinary qualities
and pervasiveness won out, and the project’s goals were to counter
false stereotypes about it and emphasize instead the remarkable di-
mensions of its cultural, intellectual, and scientific significance as
well as the specter of its potential extinction.

Unlike most of the other exhibitions Doran organized before
and after, largely around his own considerable field documen-
站, this project necessitated a deep and sustained dive into a
subject of vast scope and complexity that spanned the continent.
Never seeking to “go it alone,” he invited a long list of colleagues
to write for the accompanying 424-page book (the largest and
heaviest the museum had yet produced, with nineteen chapters
and eighteen “interleaves”—the name for the mini-essays that
could highlight focused topics that have become a mainstay of
Fowler publications).2 Doran committed to writing three of the
book’s chapters himself, and as Henrietta Cosentino, the museum’s
senior editor at the time recalls, “Doran wanted this volume to be

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Installation view of Sacred Arts of Haitian

8
Vodou, Fowler Museum, 1995.
照片: Dennis J. Nervig, courtesy of the Fowler
Museum at UCLA

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Installation view of Sleeping Beauties:

9
African Headrests and Other Highlights from
the Jerome L. Joss Collection at UCLA, Fowler
Museum, 1993.
照片: Dennis J. Nervig, courtesy of the Fowler
Museum at UCLA

as comprehensive and as perfect as humanly possible. He couldn’t
bear the thought of missing one word said about the subject—a
possible revelation.”3 This is partly why it was not published until
after the exhibition closed, but who could blame Doran—not only
the consummate researcher but also charged with overseeing three
other books and exhibitions opening simultaneously, and prepar-
ing for the new museum’s grand launch.

Elephant was perhaps the paradigmatic Fowler team-based
努力, given the many individuals across a range of disciplines who
were consulted and the herculean efforts of the Fowler’s staff to
brainstorm about the interpretation and presentation of its exhi-
bition narrative (see Interleaf). Doran notably plumbed the depths
of the Fowler’s own collections to build the exhibition’s checklist
and also raised funds from the museum’s key donors to buy select
additional objects. With more than 250 objects and 70 lenders, 这
was the Fowler’s capstone inaugural effort, which William Wilson
(1993) described as “mesmerizing” and the “most ambitious or-
ganizational effort ever concocted by this museum and one of the
most moving.” Henrietta Cosentino also shared a fond memory of
experiencing the exhibition:

I recall that, leaving the exhibition, you came eyeball to eyeball with
a closeup of an elephant’s eye. It was the most poignant moment of a
show that was already momentous and almost too much to absorb.
Encountering that elephant’s eye was like catching a glimpse of Doran,
unveiled—his shy soul for a split second naked and unflinching.4

Staff and anyone who visited the new Fowler before the exhi-
bition opened (and even long afterward) may remember, as I do,
the shrine Doran created in a bookshelf in his office as an ode
to all things pachyderm (如图. 5). It was de rigueur to bring him
a treasured elephant tchotchke and to search for them wherever
you went to find the most obscure or inventive examples (我认为
this gifting tradition went on for years, as did Doran’s penchant for
regifting things back to others). It was quite hilarious to see him
riding his bouncing Dumbo to the squeals of kids and adults alike
(如图. 6). Doran became, simply put, besotted with elephants! 这是
to his credit that no matter the seriousness of his scholarly goals,
fun was never far from center stage. A project on the African ele-
phant, even if he initially worried the subject was too “cute,” proved
to be of equally outsize consequence. In keeping with his more is
more maxim, the project’s funding also allowed for an elementary
school initiative, “Elephant Tracks,” which ensured that participat-
ing teachers and their classes could attend special programs at the
Los Angeles Zoo and the Los Angeles Country Natural History
Museum as well as at the Fowler. 和, in true Doran Ross fashion,
he even compiled a two-sided CD of fifteen classical and modern
musical compositions to accompany the exhibition, 包括
the likes of Igor Stravinsky’s “Circus Polka for a Young Elephant”
(1942) or Henry Mancini’s “Baby Elephant Walk” (1961) written
for the film Hatari.

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The exhibition was presented in the
Fowler Museum’s Jerome L. Joss
Gallery and was organized around a
number of thematic sections, 包括
those that offered a focused look at
the artistic transformation of elephant
imagery by specific ethnic groups, 如何
the elephant’s body offered many raw
materials for making objects, 和
history of European expansion on the
continent that led to the overseas trade
violently exploiting the animal’s ivory.

(top to bottom)
A: Focus on Asante art

乙. Text introducing the section on the
materials of the elephant’s body used
for making objects

C. Focus on the Cameroon Grassfields

D. Focus on the Ivory Trade

All installation photographs by Dennis
J. Nervig, 1992, courtesy of the Fowler
Museum at UCLA.

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10 Installation view of Music in the Life of
非洲, 1999.
照片: Jonathan Molvik, courtesy of the Fowler
Museum at UCLA

在 1990, Doran was promoted to deputy director and curator of
African art, a dual position he held until 1996 when he was made
the museum’s first nonfaculty full-time director. Until he hired
Africanist art historian Mary (Polly) Nooter Roberts in 1999 到
serve as the Fowler’s first chief curator, Doran continued his active
curatorial role and also served as project director on nearly every
major exhibition and publication effort, regardless of geographical
focus, until his retirement in 2001 (totaling thirty-six on African or
African Diaspora topics plus several that opened post-retirement).
A selection of these key 1990s endeavors is described in the essays
that follow this overview.

Doran also played an equally significant role in building the
Fowler’s permanent collection, especially in the course of conduct-
ing research for specific projects, starting with The Arts of Ghana.
Cognizant of the controversies and ethical dilemmas around field
collecting, Doran did so strategically and astutely, with careful atten-
tion to sources, 可达性, and the “nonprivileged” status of certain

categories of objects, and only after careful consultation with owners,
artists, and project collaborators. Beyond aesthetic considerations,
he defined three other principles that guided selections: “the need
to address underappreciated genres of art, the interpretive potential
of an object or group of objects, and even possible audience inter-
est” (Berns, 罗伯茨, and Ross 2010: 191). When he began collecting
for the Fowler in the late 1970s, his emphasis was on the “popular
arts” of Ghana and this is reflected in the museum’s now-extensive
holdings of asafo flags and kente (the royal African cloth and its
myriad manifestations in African American culture), two of his pri-
mary arenas of sustained research and writing (see Forni and Quick,
this issue). These early efforts set a precedent for much collecting to
follow, often in support of identifying key visual materials needed
to amplify the interpretive themes integral to exhibition narratives
as defined by their curators (see Roberts, this issue; see also Berns,
罗伯茨, and Ross 2010: 193–96). 日益, Doran was also at-
tentive to the work of contemporary African artists, especially those
responding to timely political and social issues and reflecting on
personal values, as was certainly the case with Kwame Akoto, a.k.a.
Almighty God (see Forni, this issue). During his many official trips
to Africa, Doran seized upon these opportunities, whether collect-
ing the charming paintings of the Tinga Tinga collective in Tanzania
(see Kratz, this issue) or going to South Africa in 1994 after the fall of
apartheid and the democratic election of Nelson Mandela to acquire
key works marking this momentous transition (如图. 7). Several of his
other wide-ranging collecting pursuits included such popular forms
as commemorative textiles, painted barber signs, and soccer mem-
orabilia, especially from the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa
(the first African nation to host the soccer finals).

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Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, which opened in 1995, was one of
Doran’s most intense preoccupations, as we’ve learned here from
Donald Cosentino (see First Word, this issue). He helped facili-
tate the acquisition of a distinguished collection of Vodou arts
from Virgil Young, which became a highlight of the exhibition. A
substantial number of other objects were purchased directly from
and with the support of Vodou religious specialists, which were
essential to building the checklist of a stunning 900 objects that
filled the displays, altars, and ritual space of the installation (如图.
8; see Berns, 罗伯茨, and Ross 2010: 193). Without Doran’s acuity
in these matters, respect for the religious traditions in which such
things are so deeply embedded, and insistence on collaborating
transparently with Haitian colleagues and the project’s co-cura-
托尔斯 (Cosentino and the late anthropologist/art historian Marilyn
Houlberg), an exhibition like this one would never have had the
power and resonance to do its intended work of demystifying a re-
ligion as profoundly misunderstood as “voodoo.” The Fowler’s tal-
ented exhibition designer, David Mayo, who accompanied Doran
and Don Cosentino to Haiti, has these recollections:

1994. The Daewoo pitches and pounds down yet another destroyed
road of Cité Soleil, a suburb of Port-au-Prince. Doran Ross (项目
director), Don Cosentino (curator) and I are on our way to meet with
another oungan (Vodou practitioner). His ounfo (ceremonial space)
is purported to contain particularly good Vodou altars. We are not
disappointed. I am desperately trying to understand the aesthetics
of these masterworks of collage. Don is diving ever deeper into the
beautiful madness of this complex belief system. Doran is explor-
ing the principles that underly an art that springs from the confines
of this thing called Vodou. Doran studies the detritus as well as the
masterworks. He distills this mélange into forms of art worthy of

40 | african arts SPRING 2022 VOL. 55, NO. 1

11 Installation view of Music in the Life of
非洲, 1999.
照片: Jonathan Molvik, courtesy of the Fowler
Museum at UCLA

The final room of the exhibition, “Music to
Hear,” offered visitors a chance to make
their own music with instruments supplied
by the Fowler alongside various kinds of
instructions and listening stations.

connoisseurship. Don explores the brilliance of a street aesthetic col-
liding with religion. I find myself slipping steadily into a disturbing
fever dream. What will come of this?

We careen through the labyrinthine world of Port-au-Prince seek-
ing artifacts, 图片, and feelings that reflect the essence of Vodou.
The Iron Market, the National Palace, the upscale galleries of Pétion-
Ville, private collectors, Vodou ceremonies, but especially ounfo after
ounfo. Doran brought a cool, calculating eye to our explorations. 他的
approach was respectfully playful: an appreciation of the seriousness
of Vodou as a way of life while delighting in the eccentric imagery
that defines it. It was a point of view that helped me understand the
sophistication of the art that populates Vodou. Developing an exhi-
bition as unusual as the Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou was a great
opportunity to witness Doran’s peculiarly obsessive approach to art.
Something I’m not likely to forget.5

Beyond his own role in acquiring objects for the museum,
Doran also facilitated significant gifts of art from long-term pa-
trons who chose the Fowler as a home for their carefully assembled

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collections (Berns, 罗伯茨, and Ross 2010: 196–98; Berns 2014:
28–29). 例如, 这 1993 exhibition Sleeping Beauties: 非洲人
Headrests and Other Highlights from the Jerome L. Joss Collection at
UCLA (如图. 9) featured promised gifts from Joss, a major patron
who also had helped fund the new Fowler building and has its
largest gallery named after him. The headrests and other sculp-
tural works he donated from Africa and Indonesia were charac-
terized by Doran as “a major asset to our collections.” Art historian
威廉·J. Dewey was invited to curate the presentation of “sleep-
ing beauties” drawing on his field research among the Shona and
other southern African peoples and to author the accompanying
publication.6 Doran organized the installation of Joss’s other gift
“highlights,” and edited a second book Visions of Africa: The Jerome
L. Joss Collection of African Art at UCLA (1994), which included
catalogue entries written by a long list of twenty-eight specialists
on particular object-types.

Acquiring this substantial collection of African headrests high-
lighted another relatively unsung category of “personal object,”
whose functionality and artistry are found across the continent (和
the earliest examples from Egypt dating to the third millennium bce;
see Dewey 1993: 30–31, 如图. 1). Doran relished the close friendship
and collegial relationship he had with Joss, taking pleasure in helping
to source these wonderfully diverse objects that reveal, as do gourds,
ceramics, and other practical genres with domestic and ritual pur-
姿势, the wide-ranging inventiveness of African artists (也
artists from across Asia and the Pacific). There is wonderful irony in
the fact that in Jerome Joss’s earlier advertising career he coined the
term “Posturepedic” for Sealy’s distinctively firm bedding and that
his singular collecting obsession was also about making sleep more
comfortable! In Henrietta Cosentino’s biographical sketch on Joss
she wrote that, “With this loving collection of headrests, he awakens
our aesthetic attention, helps us see culture in new ways, 乃至
sets us to dreaming” (1993: 13).

Helen and Robert Kuhn were also long-term Fowler patrons
and major collectors of African art. They had a singular passion for
African musical instruments, especially because of their capacity
to double as spectacular sculpture—each instrument a work of art

in its own right. Gifting their 144-object collection to the Fowler
在 1991 和 1992 might have simply offered the museum an op-
portunity to exhibit a selection of its finest examples. 但, 反而,
in Doran’s inimitable way, he used the donation as a springboard
for developing a citywide celebration of Africa’s musical legacy. 他
wisely drew on faculty in UCLA’s important ethnomusicology de-
partment, one of the first and most distinguished in the country.
He assembled planning teams that included scholars who studied
the musical traditions of Africa and the various African-influenced
musical genres recognized in America and further afield in the
Diaspora. Always thinking of how more can be more, Doran spear-
headed the umbrella project the Heritage of African Music, 哪个
included exhibitions at the Fowler and at the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art featuring the Kuhn’s Africa-based collection and a
third on Diasporic traditions at the California African American
Museum. The Fowler’s eight-month-long exhibition, Music in the
Life of Africa, was organized around case studies that were both
thematic and geographic/ethnographic, each highlighting key in-
strument types contextualized with image and sound. 数字 10
shows a focus on The Musical Art of the Griot within the section
on Religion, with photographs and video featuring balafons in use.
The final room in the exhibition offered a range of drums, rattles,
gongs, thumb pianos and more to be played by visitors to make
their own music (如图. 11). Offering such hands-on experiences,
especially to children and families, was a key pedagogical compo-
nent and a reflection of Doran’s (and Betsy Quick’s) insistence that
exhibitions should also be participatory and fun. The Heritage of
African Music was also complemented by extensive performances,
workshops, lectures, and a collaborative arts and music program
developed with the Los Angeles Unified School District. Along
with Wrapped in Pride (see Quick, this issue), which closed just
before Music in the Life of Africa, such expansive community-based
efforts demonstrate Doran’s extraordinary vision, 领导, 和
prodigious working style.

Another thing Doran prioritized to great effect was scheduling
complementary exhibitions to run simultaneously so they could
play off each other to enrich visitor engagement. Smaller exhibitions

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12 Installation view of Muffler Men,
Muñecos, and Other Welded Wonders, Fowler
Museum, 1999–2000.
照片: Don Cole, courtesy of the Fowler
Museum at UCLA

This view highlights Duck, by Kal Mekkawi of
Affordable Muffler and Auto Repair, 私人的
收藏, and a series of dogs by various
artists.

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were organized to riff on larger endeavors, especially traveling exhi-
bitions the Fowler took from other museums. 例如, 沿着-
side the 1999–2000 show Recycled/Re-Seen: Folk Art from the Global
Scrap Heap (Museum of International Folk Art, 圣达菲), Doran
invited UCLA graduate students Patrick A. Polk and Timothy C.
Correll to co-curate Muffler Men, Muñecos, and Other Welded
Wonders (如图. 12). Hiding in plain sight, this project brought at-
tention to the whimsical, eye-catching sculptures made by local,
mostly Latino welders who repurposed cast-off auto parts. 相似地,
the 1998–1999 exhibition Bicycles: 历史, Beauty, Fantasy (Pryor
Dodge Bicycle Collection) prompted the
companion project, also curated by Patrick
A. Polk, Cruisin’, Stylin’, and Pedal-Scrapin’:
The Art of the Lowrider Bicycle—to the de-
light of young and teenage visitors. 这些
pairings show how Doran improvised to

highlight the often-unsung local manifestations of global artistic
and cultural phenomena. They also show, 当然, that more is
more is indeed more.

I have not mentioned the role of serendipity in Doran’s work-
ing process but certainly it, 也, infused his timing, curatorial
choices, and success. This is especially true of one final project
在 2000 that deserves mentioning, Main Event: The Ali/Foreman
Extravaganza Through the Lens of Howard L. Bingham, 哪个
sprung from Doran’s entrepreneurial spirit and responsiveness to
the power of storytelling (如图. 13). 在 1999, his research assistant

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13 Installation view of Main Event: 这
Ali/Foreman Extravaganza Through the Lens
of Howard L. Bingham, Fowler Museum,
2000.
照片: Jonathan Molvik, courtesy of the
Fowler Museum at UCLA

14 left–right: Howard L. Bingham,
Doran H. Ross, and Muhammed Ali at a
private museum event, 2000.
照片: Unknown photographer, courtesy of
Betsy D. Quick

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15 Installation view of Art of the Lega,
Fowler Museum, 2001.
照片: Don Cole, courtesy of the Fowler
Museum at UCLA

Linda Lee was running down the Los Angeles-based photographer
Howard Bingham to get permission to use his photographs for
Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity.
Her tenacity paid off when Bingham arrived at the Fowler with
images in hand and met Doran, who was duly impressed with
Bingham’s work and learned about his extensive documentation of
the famous 1974 heavyweight boxing match in Kinshasa between
Muhammed Ali and George Foreman. Bingham and Ali had been
friends since 1962, and as Ali’s personal photographer, Bingham
accompanied him to what became an eight-week extravaganza
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Zaire). In typical
Doran Ross fashion, he saw a potentially great traveling exhibition
opportunity with huge popular appeal and took on the job himself
of culling through between 6,000 和 7,000 images to arrive at the
final 130. 而且, as he wrote in the opening text panel: “这
exhibition is concerned less with the events in the ring than with
the politics of sports, celebrity journalism, celebrity journalists, 这
rigors of training, the devotion of fans, and even the relatively quiet
moments between public activities.” Main Event was the first US
exhibition to spotlight Bingham’s extraordinary photographs and
to offer such intimate portraits of Ali, Foreman, and others who
participated. 不出所料, the show garnered enormous press
and attendance, and the opening program featured a full-house

public lecture by Bingham (如图. 14). 重要的, Main Event
also offered a glimpse into the sinister regime of Zaire’s president,
Mobutu Sese Seko, who exploited the match for his own self-pro-
motion and siphoned funds from his failing national treasury
to guarantee a spectacular purse for each fighter as well as oper-
ated a prison underneath the very stadium where the fight was
握住 (see Lemons 2000).

Even though Doran officially retired at the end of UCLA’s fiscal
year in June 2001, he had initiated the planning for several future
exhibitions: Art of the Lega: Meaning and Metaphor in Central
Africa—scheduled to open in October 2001; Ways of the Rivers: 艺术
and Environment of the Niger Delta in 2002 (see Peek and Anderson,
this issue); and A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal in 2003
(see Roberts, this issue). For Art of the Lega, Doran had encouraged
Jay T. 最后的, 开始于 1999, to donate the collection of 318 考试-
ples of Lega arts he had amassed over a forty-year period, “making
the Fowler one of the finest repositories of Lega art anywhere in the
world” (Berns 2014: 28–29). Doran had invited Elisabeth Cameron
(a former UCLA art history graduate student who had worked on
two earlier Fowler projects; see Cameron, this issue) to guest curate
the exhibition, which was produced in partnership with the Nelson
Atkins Museum of Art (如图. 15). The gift was completed under my
watch in 2013, and we traveled the exhibition that same year to the
musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. Jay and Deborah
最后的, patrons of the museum since the early 1970s, remain among
the Fowler’s most important supporters and donors of art.

It bears repeating that Doran’s multifaceted legacy at the
Fowler Museum may be best expressed through the collections
he facilitated and built—permanent resources for study, 教学,

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解释, artist interventions, and dissemination via myriad
forms of outreach, whether educational programming, exhibitions,
or publications. During field trips to Ghana he himself amassed
notable collections of Fante asafo flags and Akan kente cloth that
are among the most significant in the world not just for their range
and artistry but because of the documentation that accompanies
他们 (see Quick and Forni, this issue). He also helped secure sig-
nificant gifts of Akan forowa and goldweights as well as the paint-
ings of popular Kumasi-based sign painter, Almighty God (看
Forni, this issue). There are many other collections for which he
was responsible, but perhaps most groundbreaking was the Joint
Textile Collecting Project in which the Fowler partnered with the
Musée National du Mali from 1987–1990 to acquire textiles for
both institutions (see Hoffman and Kratz, this issue). Doran also
supported a second collecting initiative by art historian Barbara E.
Frank in 1991 in the Folona region of Mali, where she assembled a
comprehensive representation of pottery types also for the Musée
National du Mali; little did he know that this endeavor would in-
spire a major shift in her research over the subsequent thirty years,
focusing on the potters of the Folona (see Frank, 即将推出).

This overview essay summarizes many of the ways Doran actu-
alized the Fowler’s mission, priorities, and goals over the course
of his tenure, helping build for the museum a distinctive and un-
paralleled position in the cultural landscape of Los Angeles. In an
essay Doran wrote for UCLA Magazine in 1997, not long after he
assumed the “official” directorship of the Fowler, he said:

PAUSE. A sudden full stop and interlude of silence from him …
It was a disarming moment that effectively created a freeze frame
during a conversation. Along the way I learned the intricacies of
THE PAUSE. He used it judiciously but to great effect.7

和, equally strategic in my view, Doran liked to keep meetings
short and set his office thermostat accordingly to a near deep freeze!
Doran was an extraordinary mentor, colleague, and friend, 和我
feel blessed to have been one of the beneficiaries of his generosity,
注意力, and affection. There have been times over the past year
of pandemic challenges that I wished I could pick up the phone
and call him, or talk over lunch at his favorite Italian restaurant.
I know I will think of him often and smile about what he might
think or say about the Fowler or the field of African art studies, 和
their futures. My home is graced with the beautiful gourds he gave
我, my “stop smoking” Almighty God cat paintings, the Ghanaian
“wives” that used to grace his living room. He has left me with so
many memories to savor and enjoy. I will miss him, always.

Notes
1 An excerpt of comments made by Doran H. Ross upon receiving the Culture of
Liberation Award from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, 天使们, 1998.
2 According to Henrietta Cosentino (the Fowler’s senior editor at the time and
editor of Elephant), the idea for the “interleaf ” came from its use in Susan Vogel’s Africa
Explores (1991).
3 Henrietta Cosentino, personal communication, 2021.
4 Henrietta Cosentino, personal communication, 2021.
5 David Mayo, personal communication, 2021.
6
freelance copy editor for the volume, some dozen years before she became the executive
editor of African Arts. She was doomed from the start.
7 David Mayo, persoanl communication, 2021.

[Ed. 笔记] And in a startling act of prescience, Doran hired Leslie Ellen Jones as a

In our exhibitions and public programs, we try to be guided by audi-
ence-embracing objectives … Art is one very telling way to explore the
rich heritages that all of us may claim, the visual resonances and re-
naissances we readily find in our own backyard, especially here in Los
安吉利斯, one of the most culturally diverse of all cities (Ross 1997: 22).

References cited
Berns, Marla C. 2014. World Arts, Local Lives: The Collections of the Fowler Museum at
UCLA. 天使们: Fowler Museum at UCLA.

Berns, Marla C., and Barbara Rubin Hudson. 1986. The Essential Gourd: Art and History
in Northeastern Nigeria. 天使们: UCLA Museum of Cultural History.

The foundation he built, working closely with the museum’s staff
and many collaborators locally as well as from around the world,
set the stage for the Fowler’s future trajectory and growth. When I
became director following Doran’s retirement in 2001, after having
partnered with the museum on a number of exhibition projects,
some of my and some of the Fowler’s origination, the transition
was fluid because I subscribed to many of the museum’s already
established values and guiding principles (although I am not an
equal proponent of Doran’s “more is more is more” maxim!). I am
grateful for all he taught me and for the constancy of his support
before and then during my own Fowler tenure. He stepped away to
let me develop my own priorities and leadership style, only inter-
vening when asked. He came to almost every Fowler opening and
was always a welcome presence at the institution that was such an
indelible part of his life. I do want to add that, lest anyone think that
Doran never got angry or expressed his displeasure, I can attest
to the phone calls and occasional letters where he spoke his mind
about something that involved him. Others have experienced his
strong views and persuasive arguments. Why should we expect
anyone with Doran’s level of passion, 承诺, and engage-
ment to settle for anything less than the best and what he believed
to be the correct path forward? David Mayo, who worked with him
so closely, recalls Doran’s tactics when he wanted a different result:

I sat across from his desk and made my pitch. The conversation
proceeded as one would expect and then I was confronted by THE

44 | african arts SPRING 2022 VOL. 55, NO. 1

Berns, Marla C., Mary Nooter Roberts, and Doran H. Ross. 2010. “African Art in the
Fowler Museum at UCLA: Collections and Research, Exhibitions and the Public.” In
Kathleen Bickford Berzock and Christa Clarke (编辑。), Representing Africa in American
Art Museums: A Century of Collecting, PP. 184–204. Seattle: 华盛顿大学
按.

Cole, Herbert M., and Doran H. Ross. 1977. The Arts of Ghana. 天使们: UCLA
Museum of Cultural History.

Cosentino, Henrietta. 1993. “Jerome Lionel Joss.” In William J. 杜威, Sleeping Beauties:
African Headrests and Other Highlights from the Jerome L. Joss Collection at UCLA, PP.
8–13. 天使们: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.

杜威, 威廉·J. 1993. Sleeping Beauties: African Headrests and Other Highlights from
the Jerome L. Joss Collection at UCLA. 天使们: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural
历史.

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