{
"data": {
"id": 154915,
"accession_number": "1989.48",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Face Mask, early 1900s. Attributed to Sabariko Kon\u00e9 (Senufo, d. c. 1950). Wood, upholstery studs, resin, and paint; overall: 31.6 x 16.7 x 11.4 cm (12 7/16 x 6 9/16 x 4 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1989.48",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Face Mask",
"creation_date": "early 1900s",
"creation_date_earliest": 1900,
"creation_date_latest": 1920,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"Africa, West Africa, C\u00f4te d'Ivoire"
],
"technique": "Wood, upholstery studs, resin, and paint",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "African Art",
"collection": "African Art",
"type": "Mask",
"measurements": "Overall: 31.6 x 16.7 x 11.4 cm (12 7/16 x 6 9/16 x 4 1/2 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"overall": {
"height": 0.316,
"height_inch": 12,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.4375,
"width": 0.167,
"width_inch": 6,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.5625,
"depth": 0.114,
"depth_inch": 4,
"depth_inch_fraction": 0.5
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 311440,
"title": "Notable Acquisitions",
"description": "Notable Acquisitions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 7-September 15, 1991).",
"opening_date": "1991-06-07T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 204227,
"title": "Senufo: Art and Identity in West Africa",
"description": "Senufo: Art and Identity in West Africa. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 22-May 31, 2015); Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO (June 28-September 27, 2015); Mus\u00e9e Fabre, Montpellier, France (November 28, 2015-March 6, 2016).",
"opening_date": "2015-02-22T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 287107,
"title": "African Master Carvers: Known and Famous",
"description": "African Master Carvers: Known and Famous. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 26-July 16, 2017).",
"opening_date": "2017-03-26T04:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "CMA 1991: \"Notable Acquisitions,\" Bulletin 78 (June 1991), p. 114, repr.",
"opening_date": "1991-06-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art (2/22/15-5/31/15) Saint Louis Art Museum (6/28/15-9/27/15) Mus\u00e9e Fabre, Montpellier, France (11/28/15-3/6/16) \"Senufo: Art and Identity in West Africa\"",
"opening_date": "2015-02-22T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art (3/26/2017-7/16/2017); \u201cAfrican Master Carvers: Known and Famous\u201d.",
"opening_date": "2017-03-26T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "James Freeman, Kyoto, Japan",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "?-1989",
"sortorder": null
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH by purchase",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1989-",
"sortorder": 2
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "Sabarikwo, the sculptor of this mask, enjoyed great fame and traveled widely through C\u00f4te d'Ivoire's Boundiali region.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Face masks like this example are most typically worn during initiation and funerary rituals of a poro association, an age-based organization with religious and sociopolitical responsibilities. Though only worn by men, the masks have facial characteristics that are essentially female, and their imagery is closely related to ideas of sexuality and fertility. The scarification mark on this mask\u2019s forehead is an oblique symbol of a woman\u2019s genitalia, while its lustrous black surface imitates a woman\u2019s oiled, smooth skin\u2014a sign of ideal feminine beauty.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1989.48-face-mask"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. CMA Handbook, 1991, p. 143.",
"page_number": "",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Young-S\u00e1nchez, Margaret. \"The Cleveland Museum of Art.\" African Arts 30, no. 1 (1997): pp. 66-71, repr. p. 69.",
"page_number": "",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Drewal, Henry John. \"Notable Acquisitions.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 78, no. 3 (1991): 63-147.",
"page_number": "Reproduced and Mentioned: p. 114",
"url": "https://www.jstor.org/stable/25161319"
},
{
"citation": "Petridis, Constantijn. South of the Sahara: selected works of African art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2003.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: cat. 6, p. 42 - 43",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Gagliardi, Susan Elizabeth, and Constantijn Petridis. Senufo Unbound: Dynamics of Art and Identity in West Africa. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2015.",
"page_number": "fig. 103, pp. 152-3",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "\"Collections..\u201d Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 55, no. 6 (November/December 2015): 12.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 12",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAMM2015-06"
},
{
"citation": "Petridis, Constantijn, and Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi, \"Mapping Senufo: Making Visible Debatable Information and Situated Knowledge\" Emily Lew Fry and Erin Canning, eds., Perspectives on Data (Art Institute of Chicago, 2022).",
"page_number": "Fig. 9",
"url": "https://www.artic.edu/digital-publications/37/perspectives-on-data/23/mapping-senufo"
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1989.48",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "John L. Severance Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 154915,
"creators": [
{
"id": 10029,
"description": "Sabariko Kon\u00e9 (Senufo, d. c. 1950)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": "attributed to",
"role": "artist",
"biography": "See http://www.mappingsenufo.org/archives/734",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"death_year": "1950",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1989-06-29T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1900,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "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 (Kpeliyehe)",
"Female Mask (kpeli-yebe)"
],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-08-03 14:22:06.426000"
}
}