SERPENT HEADDRESS NOTES 1. Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, XLVIII: 3 (March 1961), p. 40. 2. “Year in Review,” Bulletin XLVII: 12 (December 1960), p. 250, no. 13, repr. p. 234; William D. Wixom, “Two African Tribal Sculptures,” Bulletin XLVIII: 3 (March 1961), p. 40; Traditions and Revisions, 1975, cat. 117; Gabriel P. Weisberg, Images of the Mind, 1987, p. 22; Constantine Petridis, South of the Sahara: Selected Works of African Art, 2003 (cover image); David Franklin (ed.) Treasures from the Cleveland Museum of Art, 2012, pp. 286–87. 3. Geneva: Musée Barbier-Mueller, 2013, p. 35. 4. Records in the Musée du Quai Branly indicate that this photo was taken by Maurice Nicaud. 5. Komor’s archive is preserved in the archives of the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, call no. 1380-535/89.P.5. We have not yet examined this resource, but it may cast light on the period between the time the object was collected in 1954 and when it was acquired by the CMA in 1960. 6. Letters from Lee to Norweb, Feb. 22 and Mar. 22, 1960. 7. New York: The Museum for African Art, 1996. 8. Marie Yvonne Curtis in Sculptures, Jacques Kerchache (ed.), Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2000, pp. 69–70. 9. Ibid. 10. Marie Yvonne Curtis in African Art, Kristina Van Dyke (ed.), Houston: Menil Foundation, 2008, pp. 96–97. 11. Ibid. 127 wooden serpent sculpture into the fabric-wrapped palm branch armature that covered the dancer’s head. Said to be caused by insect activity—probably termites—in a 1996 condition report, the eroded appearance of the CMA serpent’s base appears to corroborate the idea put forth by Curtis in her 2008 discussion of the Menil serpent.11 It is believed that during initiation ceremonies the serpent would have been erected on an earthen altar where the novices swear to it, pray, and make offerings. However, these support pegs were central to the use of these objects, and it seems likely that they would have been well cared for. Whatever the case, we are fortunate that these remarkable scupltures survived cultural change long enough to have been acquired by the Nicauds and the Kamers in the 1950s and subsequently preserved for future generations. This essay is a revised and expanded version of a text that fi rst appeared under the title “Spirit-Bringer-of-Riches” in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s bimonthly members magazine Cleveland Art (vol. 56, no. 3, May/June 2016).
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