Two Nigerian Artefacts Reunited at the Smithsonian After a Century Apart

For more than three decades, the two-foot-high, mottled wooden sculpture of a female figure sitting with her baby across her lap, by a Mbembe artist in Cross River State, southeastern Nigeria, has been part of the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, “celebrated as one of our greatest works from that side of Nigeria,” officials said.

But it wasn’t until the opening of the new presentation of the permanent collection, “Visionary: Viewpoints on Africa’s Arts” that it’s been reunited in the museum with its long-lost probable mate. The new acquisition, on view at the museum for the first time, of a male figure in a top hat and a gun is of the same height and style as the female, with similar inlaid oval eyes and pursed lips. 

Together, the two weathered wooden figures, thought to be from the late 19th century to early 20th century, likely sat at either end of a massive slit gong, an instrument that served as kind of a tribal signal—sounded to call the Mbembe community together in case of fire, deaths, military attacks and other important events.

Their reunion in the new show is not necessarily a romantic one—the two sit in the museum as they probably did on the slit gong, with their backs to one another, as if cooling their heels following a domestic squabble. But for the museum, it’s worth celebrating having both figures together again, though 5,000 miles and an ocean away from their original home in Cross River State.

National Museum of African Art curator Kevin Dumouchelle says the museum wasn’t even sure that there was a missing half until the female sculpture was sent to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art a few years back and placed next to another that looked awfully familiar.

When it was paired with the male in the 2014 Met exhibition of Mbembe art, “It appeared at the time it might have been from the same time period,” Dumouchelle says. “But when we saw them together, it was clear these works likely were from the same slit gong.”

The existence of the male portion was not known because “it was in a private collection in Germany and really had not been widely published,” Dumouchelle says. “But the dealer who had sold them initially worked with the curator at the Metropolitan to build the collection, so she knew where it was.”

Accordingly, he says, “We were quite fortunate at that time to have a wonderful donor who acquired the male work from the collection from which it had been exhibited at that time and give it to us as a gift the following year, with the aim of being able to reunite this pair together.”

Unveiling the pair as part of the “Visionary” exhibition, Dumouchelle says, “We were quite pleased to show this reunited slit gong couple for the first time in this collection.”

Both are quite well-worn, because the gong “sat out in the open, and it was an object that was used, and as it got worn-down, it was replaced after time,” says the curator. “Part of the aesthetic appeal for these in the West is because they have this wonderfully worn tactile surface too.” 

And while those in the West may “project our own romantic images on it”, Dumouchelle adds, in Nigeria, it was more utilitarian. “In the Mbembe community, once they’d get worn down, they would get replaced and changed over.”

So it’s somewhat rare to have the pair of well-used wooden sculptures that are so old. 

“This one is probably 19th century,” he says. And though “it is quite rare for wood sculptures from Nigeria to survive, there are slit gong figures found that have dated from the 16th century”.

Together they provide a satisfying, if not entirely romantic, climax to the show, several years in the making, which is meant to choose 300 of the best items from the museum’s 12,000 item holdings and present them in several new contexts meant to frame and affect manner in which African art is experienced.

While the museum’s holdings are rich in jewelry, metalwork, painting, ceramics and costume, the signature image for “Visionary” is a recent painting by celebrated British-Ghanian painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye of a modern woman looking through binoculars. 

Recently the subject of an exhibition at New York’s New Museum, Yiadom-Boakye’s Womanology 12 may make some visitors think “Visionary: Viewpoints on Africa’s Arts” is a contemporary show of paintings.