{
"data": {
"id": 146930,
"accession_number": "1972.331",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Face Mask, possibly early 1900s. Africa, West Africa, C\u00f4te d'Ivoire or Liberia, Dan-style maker. Wood, metal, leather, and organic materials; overall: 22.9 cm (9 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Katherine C. White, 1972.331",
"current_location": "108A African",
"title": "Face Mask",
"creation_date": "possibly early 1900s",
"creation_date_earliest": 1900,
"creation_date_latest": 1925,
"artists_tags": [],
"culture": [
"Africa, West Africa, C\u00f4te d'Ivoire or Liberia, Dan-style maker"
],
"technique": "Wood, metal, leather, and organic materials",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "African Art",
"collection": "African Art",
"type": "Mask",
"measurements": "Overall: 22.9 cm (9 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"overall": {
"height": 0.229,
"height_inch": 9,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 301752,
"title": "Year in Review: 1972",
"description": "Year in Review: 1972. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 27-March 18, 1973).",
"opening_date": "1973-02-27T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "CMA 1968: \"African Tribal Images: The Katherine White Reswick Collection,\" cat. no. 55, repr.",
"opening_date": "1968-01-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "CMA 1973: \"Year in Review 1972,\" CMA Bulletin LX (March, 1973), p. 107, no. 37",
"opening_date": "1973-03-01T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Katherine White Reswick",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "?\u20131972",
"sortorder": null
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art by gift",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1972\u2013",
"sortorder": 2
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [
"682.68"
],
"did_you_know": "The eyes of this mask were altered from slits to circles; the original shape is most visible on the right eye.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "A Dan face mask's use and the costume that accompanied it are important elements that contribute to the name it receives. While we don't know those details, we can say it originally had an elaborate fiber hairstyle attached through the holes around the edge. Based on its appearance and other similar examples, this face mask with a high forehead in northern Dan style may have been called either sagbwe or gunyege. As a \"runner mask,\" it was engaged in running competitions once organized every Sunday during the dry season. As a \"fire-watcher,\" its main task was to protect the village from fire when the dangerous desert wind called Harmattan blew during the dry season.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1972.331-face-mask"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Fagg, William, and Cleveland Museum of Art. 1968. African Tribal Images; the Katherine White Reswick Collection. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, no. 55.",
"page_number": "",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Petridis, Constantine. \u201cHonoring Women: A feast ladle of the Dan people of West Africa.\u201d Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 54, no. 5 (September/October 2014): 19-20.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 19: Mentioned: p. 19, 20",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAMM2014-05"
},
{
"citation": "Smith, Fred T., Judith Perani, Joseph L. Underwood, and Martha J. Ehrlich. The Visual Arts of Africa : Gender, Power, and Life Cycle Rituals. Second edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: pp. 100-101, no. 4.12",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1972.331",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1972.331/1972.331_web.jpg",
"width": "707",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "349107",
"filename": "1972.331_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1972.331/1972.331_print.jpg",
"width": "2692",
"height": "3400",
"filesize": "5272880",
"filename": "1972.331_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1972.331/1972.331_full.tif",
"width": "4069",
"height": "5139",
"filesize": "62764652",
"filename": "1972.331_full.tif"
}
},
"alternate_images": [
{
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1972.331/1972.331_alt0_web.jpg",
"width": "640",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "371653"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1972.331/1972.331_alt0_print.jpg",
"width": "2437",
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"filesize": "5235415"
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"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1972.331/1972.331_alt0_full.tif",
"width": "3944",
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"filesize": "65145572"
},
"date_created": "2009-07-21T17:23:50",
"annotation": ""
}
],
"creditline": "Gift of Katherine C. White",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 146930,
"creators": [],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1973-02-12T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1900,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "possibly early 1900s",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [
"Face Mask (Sagbwe or Gunyege)",
"Racing Mask (gunyega) or Fire-Fighter Mask (zakpai ga)"
],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-06-19 15:15:59.722000"
}
}