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: Head
Not on view
This freestanding head with distinctive winged coiffure was among the first African works exhibited in an art gallery. Such heads and full-bodied figures, exactingly carved by Fang masters, crowned familial altars, which were composed of a bark receptacle filled with relics related to the most distinguished members of an ancestral lineage.
The exact circumstances surrounding the removal of this work from Africa are not known. However, by 1914, it had been exhibited at Robert Coady’s Washington Square Gallery in New York. The head therefore became the first African artifact displayed in New York alongside art by modern masters such as Juan Gris and Henri Rousseau.
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