On view
Cross-Collections Gallery
Mbulu ngulu (reliquary figure),
late 19th–early 20th century
Artist unidentified
Obamba
2016-49
Elder members of Obamba and Hongwe communities commissioned these figural sculptures to go on top of containers or bundles holding the relics of influential deceased family members. The wooden figures are sheathed in pieces of brass and copper—valuable materials secured through trade with Europeans—that were scoured to gleam like the surface of a body of water. In many equatorial African societies, the realm beyond the water’s surface is associated with ancestral and supernatural forces. Reliquary ensembles placed on family altars served as agents of ancestral power and were essential for the transmission of family history and genealogy. During the period of French colonial rule (1885–1960), these figures were often removed from their ensembles and separated from the human remains contained in their bases.
Information
Title
Mbulu ngulu (reliquary figure)
Dates
late 19th–early 20th century
Maker
Medium
Wood, copper, and brass
Dimensions
34.9 × 20.3 × 2.5 cm (13 3/4 × 8 × 1 in.)
Credit Line
Museum acquisition from the Holly and David Ross Collection, with the support of the Fowler McCormick Fund
Object Number
2016-49
Place Made
Africa, Gabon
Materials
Subject
[J.J. Klejman, New York, NY]; purchased by Michael Kan, Brooklyn, NY before 1968; purchased by Doreen Chu Jagoda; [purchased by Michael Oliver, New York, NY by 1978]; purchased by Holly and David Ross, Princeton, NJ, 1978; purchased by the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ, 2016.
- Alain and Françoise Chaffin, trans. Carlos E. Garcia, L'art Kota: les figures de reliquaire (Meudon, France: A. and F. Chaffin, 1979)., p. 316, pl. 199
- Warren M. Robbins and Nancy Ingram Nooter, African art in American collections, survey 1989 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), p. 277, pl. 723 (note: the PUAM and St. Louis examples are switched in this publication)
- 'Wande Abimbola et al, Secrecy: African art that conceals and reveals (Munich: Prestel, 1993), p. 152, cat. no. 75
- Alisa LaGamma et al, Eternal ancestors: the art of the Central African reliquary (New York and New Haven: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 226-227
-
"Acquisitions of the Princeton University Art Museum 2016," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 75/76 (2016-17): 126-157.
, p. 147
