Experiencing Ashé at the Picker

This special audio tour featuring selected works from the Picker Art Gallery's permanent collection represents the culmination of a semester-long research project which applied a traditional African concept of the cosmic life force to the aesthetic analysis of non-African art.

Experiencing Ashé at the Picker grew out of the course Art and Culture of the Yoruba Diaspora led by Batza Professor of Art and Art History Arturo Lindsay in the fall of 2006. Students Terrence Dilworth, Freddy Sessoms, Jina Chung (all Class of 2008), Alexandra Kislevitz, and Erika Colaiacomo (both Class of 2007) served as the project's aesthetic investigators. Using the Picker Art Gallery as their laboratory, the students tested a simple hypothesis: if we accept the Yoruba belief that ashé (the life force invested in all things) is present in inanimate objects, then we can surmise that works of art necessarily possess ashé. In exploring this idea, the students sought to assess the usefulness of ashé as an aesthetic criterion. Their research culminated in a collection of student essays; a public panel discussion of the project held at the Picker Art Gallery; and in an iPod audio tour—currently available to visitors—in which Professor Lindsay and the students address the ashé of selected artworks in the Picker's permanent collection.

PROJECT INTRODUCTION
PROJECT METHODOLOGY

The Picker Art Gallery is grateful to Ray Nardelli, Manager of Digital Media, for recording and mixing the tour, and to the Department of Information Technology for providing the iPod nanos.