the arts of africa - Dallas Museum of Art

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92 1 : icons and symbols of leadership and status In 1924, a door that Olowe had carved for the palace of the Ogoga of Ikere was included in the British Empire Exhibition in England. The British Museum officials were so impressed with the door that they arranged to acquire it for the British Museum. Works by Olowe had already reached England earlier in the century. (Many sculptures by Olowe have been acquired since 1925 by museums and private collectors in Europe, America, and Australia.)47 The Dallas olumeye was brought to England by Edwin Holland, a telegraphist who was employed by the British Colonial government in Lagos.48 How Holland obtained the olumeye is not known, but one can imagine him visiting the royal owner of the sculpture and expressing his admiration of it. The king could have given the bowl to Holland. After all, Olowe was still alive in 1919 and could carve another one. That is what happened in 1925 when he replaced the door that had remained in England after the British Empire Exhibition.
94 1 : icons and symbols of leadership and status 24 Prestige pipe bowl Cameroon, Bamum peoples 20th century Terracotta 15½ × 9 × 9 in. (39.37 × 22.86 × 22.86 cm) Gift of The Cecil and Ida Green Foundation, 1999.60 fig 32 The Queen Mother of Bamum, with many attendents, Foumban, Cameroon, c. 1907–1912. An attendant of the Queen Mother to the far left in the photo displays a ceremonial pipe. The introduction of tobacco to sub-Saharan Africa in the seventeenth century inspired the creation of new prestige objects and leadership rituals. There are numerous depictions of tobacco usage in Africa, from a seventeenth-century Yoruba divination tray49 to nineteenth-century statues of Chokwe kings holding tobacco mortars that were used on ceremonial occasions.50 In the highly stratified Bamum society, both men and women smoked tobacco in pipes befitting their social status. The largest and most elaborately decorated pipes were made by male court potters for the king (fon) and smoked on important ceremonial occasions “as a visual attribute of royal might.”51 Other potters, who included women, were brought to the Bamum court to make pipes and vessels for the palace. A pipe bowl from the Dallas Museum of Art collection exemplifies their work. The pipe bowl is modeled in the form of the head of a man with puffed cheeks and wearing an openwork headdress. Although the puffed cheeks can be found on Bamum masks, they probably serve to give the heavy pipe bowls stability. The headdress is inspired by a woven cotton cap over a netlike support fashioned from cane. The opening at the bottom of the pipe regulated the air supply. Pipe stems made of brass or carved wood were also decorated, often with colorful beadwork. An early nineteenth-century photograph of the queen mother and her attendants shows a complete pipe that was decorated with a flag (fig. 32). Since antiquity and throughout the vast continent, the visual arts have glorified and supported leadership. Whether authority was invested in a king, chief, or the elders in an association or council, those in supreme leadership positions were distinguished by a range of aesthetic emblems whose form, material, and ornamentation were the exclusive prerogatives of their rank.
Page 1 and 2: Roslyn Adele Walker is Senior Curat
Page 3: the arts of africa at the dallas mu
Page 6 and 7: director’s foreword and acknowled
Page 8 and 9: AfRicAn ARt At the DMA: A bRief his
Page 10 and 11: 16 african art at the dma: a brief
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GAMBIA GUINEA- BISSAU WESTERN SAHAR
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318 index index 319 LaGamma, Alisa,
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