Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Buffalo
Not on view
The bush buffalo figures notably in an essential episode of the Sunjata epic in which Kamissa, a shape-shifting sorceress from the land of Dô, transforms herself into a Buffalo Woman. Within the context of Mande symbolism and legend, any leader wishing to establish his authority and power over a landscape or waterway had to enter into a contract agreement with its guardian spirit, or baafaro, a composite water animal.
This artwork is meant to be viewed from right to left. Scroll left to view more.