Lecture: Clothing for the Ancestors: Global Textiles in Nigerian Egúngún Masquerade Costumes

Title

Lecture: Clothing for the Ancestors: Global Textiles in Nigerian Egúngún Masquerade Costumes

Thursday, September 23, 2021 @ 5:30 pm

Location

Friend Center, Room 101

Join in person or online. Egúngún masquerade costumes swirl into motion during festivals honoring departed ancestors. Globally sourced, their layered fabric panels reflect local aesthetics and ritual practices. Often made from reused clothing, they also illuminate regional fashions and consumer tastes in imported fabric. Considering egúngún through a textile lens, this talk by Kristen Windmuller-Luna, curator of African art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, draws from fieldwork in Nigeria and extensive analysis of égungún in museum collections. Introduced by Julianna Ochs Dweck, chief curator at the Princeton University Art Museum. 

In-person attendees should register in advance here, provide a COVID-19 vaccination attestation and contact tracing information, and wear masks at the event. Or join us live online from anywhere via Zoom. Free registration via Zoom here. (when prompted, click to sign in as “attendee”)

The livestream of this event will include live closed captions in both English and Spanish. English captions are available directly in the Zoom toolbar by clicking the "CC" icon. To access Spanish-language captioning, open Streamtext, where you can select “Spanish” to see the live captioning.

Para acceder a los subtítulos en varios idiomas, ingrese al seminario web de Zoom durante un evento en vivo, luego abra un navegador web separado para visitar esta página donde puede seleccionar "español" o el idioma de su elección.

LATE THURSDAYS! This event is part of the Museum’s Late Thursdays programming, made possible in part by Heather and Paul G. Haaga Jr., Class of 1970. Additional support for this program has been provided by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Curtis W. McGraw Foundation. 

Yorùbá artist, Nigeria, Egúngún masquerade costume (detail), probably 20th century. Princeton University Art Museum. Gift of Sherry and Arthur Stein