Snake Headdress (a-Mantsho-ña-Tshol or Inap)

Arts of Africa

Late 19th/early 20th century

Baga, Nalu, Landuma, Pukur, or Buluñits
Guinea
Coastal West Africa

The performance of the snake headdress required extraordinary strength and balance. With the headdress lashed to a conical framework of palm branches and balanced atop the head, the dancer performed sharp, quick movements; he dipped and rotated the sculpture by bending at the knees and turning at the waist. The snake is associated with the swamp-dwelling boa constrictor spirit, who blesses humankind with rain, fertility, and wealth. Snake headdress performances were widespread until the mid-1950s, when Islamic revolutionaries led a campaign to consolidate the religious and national identity of the nascent Republic of Guinea.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Arts of Africa

Culture: Baga
Title: Snake Headdress (a-Mantsho-ña-Tshol or Inap)
Place: Guinea (Object made in:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1875–1925
Medium: Wood and pigment
Dimensions: H.: 205.7 cm (81 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Muriel Kallis Newman
Reference Number: 2007.572

Allen Wardwell, Primitive Art from Chicago Collections (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960), cat. 102.
Allen Wardwell, “Primitive Art from Chicago Collections,” The Art Institute of Chicago Quarterly 54, no. 3 (Sept. 1960), pp. 8.
William S. Lieberman, An American Choice: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg/Newman Collection (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1981), pp. 147 (ill.).
Kathleen Bickford Berzock, “Snake Headdress (A-Mantsho-ña-Tshol or Inap),” Notable Acquisitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 35, 2 (2009), pp. 10-11, 92.
Richard F. Townsend and Kathleen Bickford Berzock, “The Art Institute of Chicago New Galleries for African Art and Indian Art of the Americas,” in Tribal Arts 16-1, no. 62 (Winter 2011), pp. 60 (ill.).

Art Institute of Chicago, Primitive Art from Chicago Collections, Nov. 16, 1960-Jan. 2, 1961, cat. 102.

Possibly John J. Klejman (died 1995), Klejman Gallery, New York, N.Y., before 1960 [correspondence documented in curatorial file]; sold to Muriel Kallis Newman (died 2008), Chicago, Ill., by 1960; given to the Art Institute, 2007.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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