Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History is a study of Luba art, well known for its astounding beauty, but here for the first time examined for its intellectual complexity, aesthetic impact, and social contexts. The Luba kingdoms, whose refined royal arts have influenced people hundreds of miles beyond their own Heartland with evidence traced back over one thousand years, are among the most important in central Africa. The origins of a people are made as memories are selectively chosen to make histories that “prove” the legitimacy of their claims to power, prestige, and prerogative. As other African groups have created visual arts to assist in this process, Luba peoples of southeastern Zaire have done so with an array of devices ranging from memory boards to beaded emblems, wooden figures to body arts, ornamented staffs and axes to divination devices. The narratives sculpted into these objects must be “read” by “men of memory” who have learned their skills through initiation to the Mbudye Society. Luba kings, royal titleholders, and outlying chiefs turn to them to interpret the mapped details of origin myths, protocol and prohibitions of the royal court, and other deeply encoded information.

Exhibition catalogue edited by Mary H. Nooter Roberts and Allen F. Roberts, with Foreword: From Memory to History: Processes of Luba Historical Consciousness by Jan Vansina; chapters written by the editors: Audacities of Memory; Mapping Memory; Memory in Motion, contributed chapters: Re/Constructing Luba Pasts by S. Terry Childs and Pierre de Maret; Forging Memory by William J. Dewey and S. Terry Childs; Body Memory by Jeanette Kawende Fina Nkindi and Guy De Plaen; Luba Memory Theater by Mary Nooter Roberts; Peripheral Visions by Allen F. Roberts with contribution from Pierre Petit; and Afterword: The Idea of Luba by V.Y. Mudimbe. Published and distributed by The Museum for African Art and Prestel, Munich, February 1996. 260 pp. Cloth: ISBN 3-7913-1677-X , Paper: ISBN 0-945802-14-5. LCCN: 93-80699.