77 The third one, which does have a looped braid, belonged to Katherine White and was donated to the Seattle Art Museum in Washington State.2 The use of such masks remains unclear. It has been erroneously claimed that the MIA example has no holes to attach a costume and was therefore “never used in an authentic context.” In fact, there is a row of small holes all around the rim, hidden by the beard and the mask’s perimeter.3 The 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s saw a slow growth of the African art collection, yet it included many a masterpiece, like an eighteenth-century vessel in the shape of a leopard from the royal court of Benin in present-day Nigeria (fig. 3). This type of aquamanile, used by Benin kings during hand-washing ceremonies, was always made in pairs and the match for the MIA’s vessel is at the Museum für Völkerkunde in Munich, Germany. The pair, taken from the Benin palace during the British Punitive Expedition of 1897, was presented to Emperor Wilhelm II as a gift from Consul E. Schmidt in the late 1800s. It was subsequently given by the emperor to his personal physician, Dr. Gerhard Mertz of Berlin, and the Munich museum purchased the pair in 1952 from the dealer Ludwig Bretschneider. In 1957, the director of the museum decided to deaccession one of the vessels, which the MIA ac- FIG. 5: Talismanic tunic. Anufo, Togo. C. 1900. Cotton, ink. H: 103.5 cm. Gift of Thomas Murray in honor of Roger Hollander, MIA 2013.57. FIG. 6: Hair comb. Swahili, Zanzibar, Tanzania. C. 1800. Ivory, gold. H: 12.5 cm. The Mary Ruth Weisel Endowment for Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, MIA 2012.67. quired the following year from the Swiss dealer Ernst E. Kofler.4 In 1974 a curatorial department was created at the MIA to care for the collections of African, Oceanic, and Native American art (the latter two collections were recently profiled in this magazine).5 The department’s name was changed in 2010 to the Arts of Africa and the Americas, and AAA currently holds approximately 2,500 objects from Africa. After the reorganization of the MIA’s Textiles Department in 2008, its collections were distributed among the corresponding departments, so this number includes about 500 African textiles. The pace of African art acquisitions picked up during the last decades of the twentieth century, especially after the nomination in 1988 of Evan Maurer as the director of the MIA, who held that position until his retirement in 2005. His expertise in European surrealism had led to his discovery and appreciation of Native American art and, subsequently, African art. In recent years, the collection of African art has expanded into previously underrepresented areas, corresponding in part to the changing demographics of the Twin Cities, which are home to large Somali, Ethiopian, and Liberian communities. First and foremost is a focus
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