Simon Ottenberg, anthropologist, former ASA President, author and supporter of contemporary artists from West Africa and the Pacific Northwest, died on November 1 at the age of 100. He was Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Washington, known for his voluminous writings on social culture and art in West Africa, based on extensive field work in two areas: the Afikpo village group of southeastern Nigeria and Wara Wara Bafodea Chiefdom in northern Sierre Leone. Africa wasn’t Simon’s first intellectual passion. As a youth, he longed to be a polar explorer. “I didn’t care whether I went to the North or South Pole,” he used to say.
Born in New York City, son of noted hematologist Dr. Reuben Ottenberg and his Swiss-born wife Clarisse Chene, Simon graduated from Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Bronx. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin and his Ph.D. from Northwestern University. Three years in the Army during WW II interrupted formal education, but by 1955, a job offer at Washington State College in Pullman brought Simon west. The next year, he began a three-decade career in Seattle at the UW. Living in Madrona, then Montlake, he also collected and sold antiquarian books on sub-Saharan Africa, a business developed from his late wife Nora’s store, Ottenberg Books.
Simon also collected (with compulsive passion, one might say) African and Pacific Northwest Native art. The Seattle Art Museum received an entire Afikpo masquerade ensemble (prominently displayed in the museum since 2007) that Simon assembled in collaboration with Afikpo men, led by Sam Irem. A major gift of works by Nigerian artists was donated to the Newark (NJ) Museum of Art, while works on paper by Native American artists, many of them Coast Salish, are now in the collections of Seattle Art Museum and Burke Museum at the University of Washington. Simon not only collected Coast Salish art; he formed a long friendship with Seattle artist Ron Hilbert (1943-2006). Working with Lushootseed Research (Lushootseed being the traditional language of the First Peoples of Puget Sound), he saw publication of a book on Hilbert’s life and work as a Coast Salish artist.
Simon remained professionally active up to his 100th birthday with the release of four books in his final two years. Honors were many: A visiting professorship at the University of Ghana, Legon (1970-71); visiting scholar and fellow at Jesus College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom (1987-88). A Smithsonian Regents Fellowship (1993-94) enabled him to develop an exhibition and book based on contemporary Nigerian artists of the Nsukka group. He received an honorary degree from the University of Nigeria and was named an honorary chief in Afikpo (1992). He was named an onikara, or Afikpo elder in 2010, and that same year he was made an honorary paramount chief in Wara Wara Bafodea Chiefdom.
