Tribal art of Dogon and Tellem from the Collection of Joop Stigt

In 1964 everyone in the Netherland was fascinated by the images on television of an expedition to the caves in the Bandiagara cliff in Mali, now listed as world heritage by UNESCO. The expedition was organized by the Antropo-Biologic Institute of the University of Utrecht and the museum of Land and Ethnology in Rotterdam. Led by architect Herman Haan they researched if the extinguished Tellem people were related to the current Dogon people. It was for the first time that Westerners visited the caves of the disappeared Tellem people.

Tellem expeditie (7)

Therefore the NCRV on the only television channel in the Netherlands in those days reported extensively over this expedition. Also the Algemeen Dagblad and several magazines devoted much attention to the “Tellem Expedition”. The footage was shot under difficult circumstances and flew to Holland by a KLM pilot and it was broadcasted at unannounced times. Such a “real life soap” from the distant Africa was completely new to the Dutch audience that therefore followed the expedition intensively. Many Dutch tribal art collectors started collecting African Art in that period, partly by the enormous exposure of the beautiful objects that were made by the Dogon people.

The poet Bert Schierbeek together with architect and amateur archeologist Herman Haan wrote a book about this expedition in which several objects are shown. The objects were taken to Holland on this and previous expeditions to Mali and the Dogon people (Bert Schierbeek, Moussa Oumar Sy, Herman Haan, ‘Tellem’, Phoenix boeken, Zeist, 1965). Architect Joop van Stigt and Frans van Riel were prominent collectors of Dogon objects and obtained these directly via Herman Haan.

objects veiling de zwaan

The proceeds from the auctioned objects from the collection of Joop van Stigt goes to the recently established Foundation Dogon Culture that cooperates with the foundation Stichting Dogon Onderwijs (SDO). This foundation exists for over 20 years and is led by one of Joop van Stigt’s sons, Jurriaan van Stigt, also an architect. SDO aims to improve the quality of life of the Dogon people through education but it has  been active in many fields: from building, realizing water wells and pumps, to set up educational programs, women’s empowerment and combating desertification. The funds will specifically be used to teach and locally preserve the Dogon culture.

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Until today the Netherlands plays a leading role in the research of the Tellem and Dogon people. Some of the objects in the auction are found in the Tellem caves and date before 1500. Other objects are from the Dogon time, that incorporated the Tellem culture in their own sculptures with an abstraction and reduction of the human body to an almost architectonical quality.