The Fowler Museum at UCLA (commonly known as The Fowler, and formerly Museum of Cultural History and Fowler Museum of Cultural History) is a museum on the campus of the
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...
(UCLA) which explores art and material culture primarily from
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...
,
Asia
Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...
and the Pacific, and the Americas, past and present.
The Fowler is generally home to three to six art exhibitions and also acts as a venue for lectures on cultural topics, musical performances, art workshops, family programs, festivals and more. The Fowler is located in the northern part of UCLA's Westwood Campus, adjacent to
Royce Hall
Royce Hall is a building on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Designed by the Los Angeles firm of Allison & Allison (James Edward Allison, 1870–1955, and his brother David Clark Allison, 1881–1962) and completed ...
and Glorya Kaufman Hall.
The museum is operated under the jurisdiction of
UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture.
History

The museum was established in 1963 by then UCLA Chancellor
Franklin D. Murphy as the Museum and Laboratories of Ethnic Arts and Technology.
Its first home was in the basement of Haines Hall on the UCLA campus. The goal of this new museum was to consolidate the various collections of non-Western art and artifacts on campus. In addition to active collecting, the museum initiated research projects, fieldwork, exhibitions and publications.
In 1971, the name was changed to the Museum of Cultural History and by 1975, its collections, in numbers and in quality, ranked it among the top four university museums in the country, a stature it retains to the present day.
In 1981, UCLA Chancellor
Charles E. Young, along with museum director,
Christopher B. Donnan, developed a plan for a new building to better exhibit the collection. The $22-million structure, designed by architects Arnold C. Savrann and
John Carl Warnecke, was funded by both private gifts and state resources. The large facility called the Fowler Museum of Cultural History opened on September 30, 1992, named in recognition of lead support by the Fowler Foundation and the family of collector and inventor Francis E. Fowler Jr., former owner of
Southern Comfort. In 1996,
Doran H. Ross became the director of the Fowler. In 2006, the name of the museum was formally changed to the Fowler Museum at UCLA.
In 2024, the museum repatriated to Ghana several artifacts in its collection that were previously looted by British forces from the
Ashanti Empire
The Asante Empire ( Asante Twi: ), also known as the Ashanti Empire, was an Akan state that lasted from 1701 to 1901, in what is now modern-day Ghana. It expanded from the Ashanti Region to include most of Ghana and also parts of Ivory Coast ...
in the 19th century. These included an elephant tail whisk, an ornamental chair made of wood, leather and iron, two gold stool ornaments, a gold necklace and two bracelets. That same year the museum also repatriated 20 objects to the Waramungu community in Australia.
Collections
The Fowler's collections comprise more than 120,000 art and ethnographic and 600,000 archaeological objects representing ancient, traditional, and contemporary cultures of Africa, Native and Latin America, and Asia and the Pacific.
The majority of the Fowler's holdings have been acquired via donations by individuals. The Sir Henry Wellcome Collection of 30,000 objects, assembled early in the 20th century by
Sir Henry Wellcome and given to the museum in 1965, forms the core of its African and Pacific holdings and represents the single largest gift. More than 15,000 textiles trace the history of cloth over two millennia and across five continents.
Objects from the Fowler Family Silver Collection include 400 works representing 16th- through 19th-century Europe and the United States. Among these are vessels from the workshops of
Paul de Lamerie,
Karl Fabergé, and
Paul Revere
Paul Revere (; December 21, 1734 O.S. (January 1, 1735 N.S.)May 10, 1818) was an American silversmith, military officer and industrialist who played a major role during the opening months of the American Revolutionary War in Massachusetts, ...
. In 1969, Hollywood actress
Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood (née Zacharenko; July 20, 1938 – November 29, 1981) was an American actress. She began acting at age four and co-starred at age eight in ''Miracle on 34th Street'' (1947). As a teenager, she was nominated for an Academy Award f ...
donated a collection of ancient
Chupícuaro Mexican ceramics to the Fowler Museum. In 2013, the Fowler Museum received several gifts in honor of its fiftieth anniversary. One gift was estimated to be worth around $14 million, from collector and Silicon Valley pioneer
Jay Last and his wife, Deborah. As reported by the
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
, the gift consisted of 92 wood and ivory objects from the Lega people of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Most of the holdings have been collected in the field and systematically documented, providing contextual information. As the museum augments its programming to meet the interests of the city's growing Latin American population, collection activities in this area have increased. A collection of more than 900 Mexican works was donated in 1997 by the Daniel Family and includes ceramic Trees of Life,
Day of the Dead
The Day of the Dead () is a holiday traditionally celebrated on November 1 and 2, though other days, such as October 31 or November 6, may be included depending on the locality. The multi-day holiday involves family and friends gathering to pa ...
figurines, and masks from Metepec, Oaxaca, Michoacan, Jalisco, Puebla, and Guanajuato.
Exhibitions
*Intersections: World Arts, Local Lives
*Reflecting Culture: The Francis E. Fowler, Jr. Collection of Silver
*Plus several changing exhibitions
*
Continental Rifts: Contemporary Time-based Works of Africa, 2009
Selected collection highlights
File:Chief’s Mask from Haida peoples.jpg, ''Chief's Mask'', Haida people
The Haida (, , , , ) are an Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. They constitute one of 203 First Nations in British Columbia and 231 federally recognized List of Alaska Native tribal entities, tribes in Alaska.
T ...
, British Columbia, 19th century,
File:Buddha from Sagaing, Burma.jpg, ''Buddha'', Sagaing, Burma, 17th century
File:Bamileke Mask (tsesah).jpg, ''Mask (tsesah)'', Bamileke people
The Bamiléké people are an ethnic group of Central Africa that inhabits the Western High Plateau colloquially known as the ''grassfields'' of Cameroon. According to Dr John Feyou de Hapy, Bamiléké means "people of faith".
Languages
The B ...
, Bamendjo, Cameroon, Late 19th century
File:Headdress from Efut peoples.jpg, ''Headdress'', Efut peoples, Calabar, Nigeria, 19th century
File:Hornbill Figure from Borneo.jpg, ''Hornbill figure'', Iban, Borneo, 19th century
File:Moche portrait vessel from Peru.jpg, ''Portrait vessel'', Moche style, north coast Peru,100–800 C.E.
File:Ornament for a sacred flute from Mundugumor peoples.jpg, ''Ornament for a sacred flute'', Mundugumor people, Yuat River, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, 19th century
File:Yombe Power Figure (Nkisi).jpg, ''Power figure'' (nkisi nkondi), Yombe peoples, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 18th–19th century
File:Odundo Ceramic.jpg, ''Ceramic'', Magdalene Odundo
Dame Magdalene Anyango Namakhiya Odundo (born 1950) is a Kenyan-born United Kingdom, British Studio pottery, studio potter, who now lives in Farnham, Surrey. Her work is in the collections of notable museums including the Art Institute of Chic ...
(Kenya, b. 1950)
File:Puppet the Blind Scholar.jpg, ''Hand puppet, the Blind Scholar'', Chinese, Taiwan, Early–mid-20th century
File:Santo, Virgin of the Rosary from Guatemala.jpg, '' Santo, Virgin of the Rosary'', Guatemala, Early 20th century
File:Mask (amiilk) from Tsimshian peoples.jpg, ''Mask (amiilk)'', Tsimshian peoples, British Columbia, Canada, 19th century
Directors
*Christopher B. Donnan (1981–1996)
*Doran H. Ross (1996–2001)
[
*Marla C. Berns (2001–2021)
*Silvia Forni (2022-)
In 2007, Berns' position was endowed by a $1 million donation from Los Angeles philanthropists Shirley and Ralph Shapiro in recognition of her contributions to UCLA and the community.] In 2013, Berns received the medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters of the French Republic in a ceremony conducted by Stéphane Martin, president of the Quai Branly Museum. The ceremony took place at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris on Tues., Nov 12, at the opening of ''Secrets d'ivoire: L'art des Lega d'Afrique centrale'', an exhibition of the Fowler Museum's collection of African artwork by the Lega people
The Lega people (or Warega) are a Bantu peoples, Bantu ethnic group of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In 1998 their population was about 250,000.
Location
By the 1970s Lega people were mostly living in the middle and upper Elila River, E ...
s of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was donated to the Fowler by collectors Jay T. and Deborah R. Last.
References
External links
Fowler Museum Overview of Collections
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Museums in Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles buildings and structures
University museums in California
Ethnographic museums in California
Art museums and galleries in California
Art museums and galleries established in 1963
1963 establishments in California
Pre-Columbian art museums in the United States
Asian art museums in the United States
Mesoamerican art museums in the United States
African art museums in the United States