The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 26, 2024

Headdress

Headdress

early 1900s

Did You Know?

The headdress represents a girl that evokes ideal female beauty and is ready for marriage. The depicted hairstyle was worn during the coming-out ceremony following the girls’ seclusion.

Description

Headdresses or crest masks made of antelope skin stretched over a carved head are a distinctive art form of the Cross River region in southeastern Nigeria and western Cameroon. This female evocation of ideal feminine beauty was most probably worn by an Ejagham woman in the context of a female society called Ekpa, which was responsible for the education of girls in preparation for marriage.
  • Pace Gallery, New York, NY
    Private Collection
    ?–1990
    Entwistle and Co., Ltd., London, England, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art
    1990–
    Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Drewal, Henry John. "Notable Acquisitions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 78, no. 3 (1991): 63-147. Reproduced and Mentioned: p. 113 www.jstor.org
    Young-Sánchez, Margaret. "The Cleveland Museum of Art." African Arts 30, no. 1 (1997). pp. 66-71
    Petridis, Constantijn. South of the Sahara: Selected Works of African Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2003. Reproduced: cat. 29, p. 88 - 89
    Petridis, Constantine. "A New Installation for African Art in Cleveland." Tribal 3, no. 36 (Autumn/Winter 2004). pp. 68-73
    Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 32-33
  • Notable Acquisitions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 7-September 15, 1991).
  • {{cite web|title=Headdress|url=false|author=|year=early 1900s|access-date=26 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1990.23