Robert Koenig and members of the African Ivorian dance company of Yahayaha Koumate explain the meaning of an African mask…
A member of the African Ivorian dance company of Yahayaha Koumate was performing the mask kwuya gblen-gbe ‘the tall mask’, the mask with stilts. He obviously was not dancing in his village in Ivory Coast for his fellow initiates in the men’s secret kono society…
The first in the series – I. The West Guinea Coast: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Guinea Bissau, – is now on the web site and will be available in hard copy in July, 2012…
At first thought Museums and Missionaries seem an unlikely combination. The latter’s other activities and divergent interests would seem to leave them little time either to appreciate or collect the art objects of other cultures.
It must be admitted that until the end of the 19th century and even into this century many Christian missionaries regarded the peoples and cultures among whom they worked as inferior to those of the West…
Michel Leiris and Jacqueline Delange. African Art and European Artists.
Charles Bordogna.A Cultural Heritage through Arts.
Robert J. Koenig. Beauty and the Beasts: Kifwebe Masks of the Songye, Luba and Related People.
Gelede Masks, To Protect Man from Witches
Robert Farris Thompson. Bondu Mask – Learning from Beauty.
Thimothy F.Garrand. The Ivoirian Beads.
The Black Stool Symbol of Power
The Artistry of Traditional African Sculpture
William Siegman. The African Art.
Fr. Thomas Wright. The SMA Fathers and the Museum of African Art.