Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Sculptural Element from a Reliquary Ensemble
Not on view
Despite high attendance and the critical success of the 1927 exhibition, Locke’s ambitious project for a museum of African Art in Harlem never came to fruition, and the Blondiau-Theatre Arts Collection faded from memory. Unsold works from the collection eventually were dispersed between American museums and historically black universities, while the largest bulk entered the collection of the Harlem Branch of the New York Public Library. Throughout the 1930s, parts of the collection were on display in the Library’s reading room. While the collection consisted mainly of decorative arts from the Congo, it also comprised works from Equatorial Africa, such as this Kota reliquary element from Gabon on view in the exhibition, appealing in its simplicity.
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