Helmet Mask (early 1900s): Art, History and Details

Helmet Mask (early 1900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Deliberately distorted and exaggerated facial features reflect the awesome powers of a great chief. The quadrupeds on the mask’s head suggest the close association between the leopard and the king. In the Cameroon grasslands, masks are typically related to a regulatory society that guards ancestral mores; society members wear the masks and dance in the secrecy of the night.

Object facts

• Title: Helmet Mask
• Date: early 1900s
• Culture: Africa, Central Africa, Cameroon, possibly Kom-style maker
• Type: Mask
• Technique: Wood, paint, organic material, and iron alloy
• Dimensions: Overall: 33 x 63.5 x 41.9 cm (13 x 25 x 16 1/2 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 1971.66

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William D. Wixom in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph M. Coe

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art "1971 Year in Review." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 59, no. 1, cat. 21.
• African Arts 1972a, "New Acquisitions." African Arts 5, no. 4 (1972): 78, p.69.
• Sica, Emelia, Evelyn Mitchell, and Cleveland Museum of Art Department of Art History and Education. 1973. An Introduction to the Arts of Africa and Oceania. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, p. 8.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.