Mask (Ntomo)

In consultation with Robert Goldwater, then director of New York’s now-defunct Museum of Primitive Art (MPA), Nelson A. Rockefeller and the MPA acquired several Ntomo association face masks that now are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection. Goldwater included some of the masks in the MPA’s 1960 landmark exhibition of Bamana art. In the exhibition’s accompanying publication, Goldwater describes Ntomo face masks as "among the most interesting of the Bambara [or Bamana] masks." He recognizes formal variety in the carving of Ntomo face masks, but he also specifies that an "oval shaped human face surmounted by a high comb of vertical spikes or horns" distinguishes Ntomo face masks from other types of face masks.

Ntomo is one of many associations historically found in communities identified as Bamana, and its membership has usually consisted of young boys in the process of learning adult responsibilities. Not every Bamana community has always maintained or continues to maintain an Ntomo association, so the phenomenon is neither universal nor timeless (Colleyn 2009: 28). Reasons for staging an Ntomo performance have also varied, and performances have occurred at popular gatherings and other important events (Colleyn 2009: 28). Observers also report that Ntomo performers wear full-body masks, each consisting of a wooden face mask and cloth outfit.

Cowrie shells and seeds now cover the face and four vertical spikes of this Ntomo mask. When the Museum of Primitive Art (MPA) displayed the mask in its 1960 exhibition, "Antelopes and Queens: Bambara Sculpture from the Western Sudan," it had a barer surface. New York-based dealer J. J. Klejman’s November 25, 1959 invoice describes the mask as "a zoomorphic mask with four protruding vertical horns. Surface is covered with heavy, resinous patina in which seeds are embedded." In a separate November 1959 memo to Rockefeller, Museum of Primitive Art director Robert Goldwater includes the mask in a list of four "outstanding Bambara [Bamana] objects." In October 1969, the MPA added many of the shells and seeds on the mask. A note describing the treatment explains, "gen[era]l pattern indicated by orig[inal] markings and indentations followed in patterns."

Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi, Assistant Professor of Art History, Emory University, 2016


Further reading

Colleyn, Jean-Paul. 2009. Bamana. Visions of Africa. Milan: 5 Continents Editions

Goldwater, Robert. 1960. Bambara Sculpture from the Western Sudan. New York: The Museum of Primitive Art