{
"data": {
"id": 160627,
"accession_number": "1998.4",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Untitled B, 1997. Magdalene Odundo (British, born Nairobi, Kenya, 1950). Terracotta; overall: 45.3 x 27.4 x 28.1 cm (17 13/16 x 10 13/16 x 11 1/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1998.4",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Untitled B",
"creation_date": "1997",
"creation_date_earliest": 1997,
"creation_date_latest": 1997,
"artists_tags": [
"female"
],
"culture": [
"England, born in Kenya, 20th century"
],
"technique": "terracotta",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "African Art",
"collection": "African Art",
"type": "Vessels",
"measurements": "Overall: 45.3 x 27.4 x 28.1 cm (17 13/16 x 10 13/16 x 11 1/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"overall": {
"height": 0.453,
"height_inch": 17,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.8125,
"width": 0.274,
"width_inch": 10,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.8125,
"depth": 0.281,
"depth_inch": 11,
"depth_inch_fraction": 0.0625
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Incised in bottom of pot: ODUNDO/1997",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 663599,
"title": "From the Earth through Her Hands: African Ceramics",
"description": "From the Earth through Her Hands: African Ceramics. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 21, 2024-September 21, 2025).",
"opening_date": "2024-09-21T04:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Michael Hue-Williams Fine Art, London, December 26, 1997-January 24, 1998.",
"opening_date": "1997-12-26T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Anthony Slayter-Ralph, Santa Barbara, CA",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "?\u20131998",
"sortorder": null
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art by purchase",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1998\u2013",
"sortorder": 2
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "This vessel was the Cleveland Museum of Art's first acquisition of contemporary art by an African artist.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Dame Odundo\u2019s vessels represent the height of technical skill and visual inventiveness. Trained in Kenya, India, and England\u2014where she first began working in clay\u2014her influences span millennia and continents. These sources include ancient sculptors working in Greece\u2019s Cyclades islands; artists liken Maria Mart\u00ednez from San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico; European modernists like Jean Arp and Henry Moore; and Gwari potters like Ladi Kwali. Kwali was Odundo\u2019s primary instructor in Nigeria in 1974. Besides Kwali\u2019s modernist works, she also adapted the shapes of historical Nupe vessels (left). This vessel\u2019s sheen comes from its glaze and from the artist using tools to burnish (polish) its surface.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79982138"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Cooper, Emanuel. Magdalene Odundo (Aldershot ; Burlington, VT : Lund Humphries, 2004), p. 82, 119, cat. 115.",
"page_number": "",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Petridis, Constantine. South of the Sahara: Selected Works of African Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art; distributed by the University of Washington Press, 2003: 20, fig. 7.",
"page_number": "",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, \u201cPainting by 18th-century Italian Master Gaetano Gandolfi among Works Added to CMA Collection,\u201d March 24, 1998, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.",
"page_number": null,
"url": "https://archive.org/details/cmapr4109"
},
{
"citation": "Petridis, Constantijn. South of the Sahara: selected works of African art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2003.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: fig. 7, p. 20",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1998.4",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "John L. Severance Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 160627,
"creators": [
{
"id": 23223,
"description": "Magdalene Odundo (British, born Nairobi, Kenya, 1950)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": null,
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1950",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1998-03-09T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1997,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1997",
"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": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-08-03 14:23:32.982000"
}
}