On view
African Art
Adoné headdress,
early 20th century
Artist unrecorded
Kurumba
2013-115
Headdresses representing antelope are danced during major lifecycle events because the antelope offers protection for most Kurumba communities. Masqueraders wearing the headdresses escort the bodies of deceased female and male elders to their tombs and supervise their burial on behalf of ancestral spirits. At funerals, masquerades are performed to honor the dead and free their spirits to travel to the world of ancestors. They are also worn just before the first rains and the beginning of planting, in collective sacrifices that honor the ancestors and the spirits of the antelope. The dancer’s costume of loose vegetable fibers, plaited into cords, was attached to the headdress through the holes at the bottom edge.
More About This Object
Information
Title
Adoné headdress
Dates
early 20th century
Maker
Medium
Wood, paint, seeds, organic material, cloth, cotton, leather, metal, and beeswax
Dimensions
without mount: 98.4 × 22.9 × 46.4 cm (38 3/4 × 9 × 18 1/4 in.)
mounted: 104.9 × 24.8 × 33.5 cm (41 5/16 × 9 3/4 × 13 3/16 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, Mary Trumbull Adams Art Fund
Object Number
2013-115
Place Made
Africa, Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou
Place Collected
Africa, Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou
Materials
Techniques
Subject
[Haji Haruna, Upper Volta, before 1977 or 1978]; [purchased by Michael Oliver African Art, New York, NY in Ouagadougou or Bobo Dioloso, Upper Volta ca. 1977-78]; purchased by the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ, 2013.
