123 FIG. 2 (above): Serpent-shaped headdress. Nalu, Guinea. Possibly late 19th or early 20th century. Wood, pigment. H: 240 cm. Acquired by Hélène and Henri Kamer in Guinea in 1957. Ex Jacques Lazard, Paris, 1957–1989; Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle–Musée de l’Homme, Paris. Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris, inv. M.H. 989.49.1. image on the didactic label for the CMA serpent when it was installed in our new African art gallery in 2010. Recently, in part thanks to a hint I received from Susan Kloman, Christie’s international department head for African and Oceanic art, I looked more closely at the historic fi eld photo and arrived at the conclusion that the serpent headdress worn by the dancer is in fact the CMA example. Given the poor quality of the image, it is understandable why others before and indeed after me—including, most recently, Belgian anthropologist David Berliner in his monograph Baga. Mémoires religieuses for the Musée Barbier Mueller in Geneva3—were unable to recognize this fact. A letter from one Madame Nicaud in Paris unearthed in the CMA’s curatorial fi le for the serpent provides confi rmation (fi g. 5). Dated July 17, 1994, not only does this letter implicitly explain that she, Jacqueline Nicaud, was the author of the photograph in question (the original of which is in the archives of the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris),4 it also states that she and her husband, Maurice Nicaud, acquired the serpent headdress in a village in Guinea in early 1954. The Nicauds were fi eld collectors and dealers, who from 1965 to 1975 ran Galerie Burgui in Paris. It is not clear just how and when the sculpture ended up in the Madison Avenue gallery of Mathias Komor in New York,5 but the CMA accessioned the sculpture in 1960 through the good graces of Emery May Norweb, who at that time was president of the board of trustees under Sherman E. Lee’s directorship. Norweb’s gift of this sculpture was touted by Lee as the museum’s “fi rst major acquisition in the fi eld of African wood sculpture in many, many years” and its “fi rst monumental piece” of African art.6 The acquisition was most likely recommended by William D. Wixom, who, after joining the curatorial staff of CMA in 1958, served as curator of Medieval and Renaissance decorative arts from 1967 until he moved on to be chairman of the department of Medieval art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cloisters in 1979, a position he would keep until his retirement in 1998. His special fondness for African art is testifi ed to by the personal collection he has built over the course of his long career.
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