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106 Among private collections of African art formed in the early twentieth century in Europe and the United States, that of Danish collector Carl Kjersmeier was one of the best known of its time. Today, Kjersmeier is perhaps most widely remembered as the author of the 1935–38 four-volume work Centres de style de la sculpture nègre africaine, which categorizes its subject matter geographically and culturally while also describing each object individually. A notable masterpiece of African art once in his collection, a Luba Shankadi doublecaryatid headrest attributed to the Master of the Cascade Coiffure, is now one of the jewels in the collection of the Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen. 1 He is also remembered for his early connection to Man Ray, whose photographs of objects in the Kjersmeier Collection remain well known (fi g. 7).2 Perhaps less well remembered today is that Carl and Amalie Kjersmeier staged an exhibition of their African collection at the Nationalmuseet that included twenty-three Bamana sogoni koun dance crests, which essentially are a variant of the better-known chi wara antelope dance crests. Twenty-three of these were in the Kjersmeier Collection, twenty-two of which were retained from fi fty-six collected by Kjersmeier and his wife in situ in French West Africa in 1931–32. While Kjersmeier has been addressed in these pages in the past,3 the sogoni koun dance crests collected by the Kjersmeiers are the particular focus of this article, which reproduces many of these objects that have been located and identifi ed. Doing so also provides insight into the nature of their collection as a whole. None of this can be fully understood without also relating the broader story of Carl and Amalie Kjersmeier. THE KJERSMEIERS AND THEIR COLLECTION Carl Ludvig Villiam Römer Nutzhorn Kjersmeier was born in 1889 in the Danish town of Vejle, where his family lived and where his father worked as a prison manager. He was named after his godfather, a Danish prefect and minister. The Kjersmeier family lived in quarters connected to the prison and the inmates occasionally assisted his mother in the kitchen. After fi nishing his primary school education, Kjersmeier moved to Copenhagen and began studying law at the university, from FEATURE Carl Kjersmeier and Sogoni Koun A Life, a Journey, and a Passion for African Art By Thomas Otte Stensager FIG. 1 (left): Carl and Amalie Kjersmeier in their living room admiring one their fi eld–collected Bamana fi gures from Sulubua. From Centres de style, pl. 2. Photo: private collection. The object in the background is now in the collection of the Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen (inv. G8047). FIG. 2 (below): Amalie Kjersmeier at home with the African collection. September 1930. Photo: private collection.


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