Magazines - Tribal Art Winter 2010

By Sebastian Miller, independant scholar.

Introduction
African masks serve as supports for the spirit of deities, ancestors, and culture heroes, which may be personified as human or animal, or a composite. Masked performances, held on the occasions of thanksgiving celebrations, rites of passage, and funerals, often entertain while they teach moral lessons. The African mask is a highly developed and enduring art form, and it serves as the subject of a new exhibition presently on display at the Dallas Museum of Art. In it, approximately seventy objects drawn from the DMA’s distinguished collection—acclaimed as one of the top five of its kind in the United States—are augmented by examples from other museum and private collections to reveal the beauty, function, and meaning of African masks. The museum’s first dedicated African art show in five years, African Masks: The Art of Disguise features several works from the DMA collection that are being publicly displayed for the first time.