Footnotes

• Exhibited:
  Governors State University, IL, 2003
  Krannert Art Museum, IL, 2003
  Belger Art Foundation/University of Missouri-Kansas City, MO, 2004
  Tall Grass Art Association, IL, 2005
  
  Published:
  Bourgeois and Rodolitz, REMNANTS OF RITUAL: SELECTIONS FROM THE GELBARD COLLECTION OF AFRICAN ART, Ethnos, New York, 2003, p.55, fig.116
  
  Bill Fagg, has written the following about this mask:
  This mask is clearly from the Makonde complex of tribes of Tanzania and Mozambique (more probably the latter) and was probably made between the two world wars. Its unusual features (straight nose, rather naturalistic ears, disposition of hair, absence of scarification, etc.) are probably due to its having been intended as a caricature of an Arab, perhaps a slaver. This may also explain the representation of the hair by pieces of monkey fur, instead of the insertion of tufts of human hair with a knife; however monkey fur is used at least on one old mask which clearly represents a Makonde (see Holy, Masks and figures from Eastern and Southern Africa, 1967, plate 71). Such representations of Arabs are very rare.

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Category: Ethnographic Art / Native American

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