Male Face Mask (N'tomo)

Late 19th or early 20th century

Bamana
Segou region, Mali
Northern Africa and the Sahel

This mask depicts a young man with an elongated face in a style that originated in the Segou region. Adolescent males danced with masks like this during their initiation into Ntomo, the first in a series of power associations that Bamana boys joined when they transitioned from youth to adulthood. The images on this mask of an antelope and two female figures encouraged young men’s prowess in farming and courting, respectively.

Status: On View, Gallery 137
Department: Arts of Africa

Culture: Bamana
Title: Male Face Mask (N'tomo)
Place: Mali (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 metal
Dimensions: 79.4 × 22.9 × 22.2 cm (31 1/4 × 9 × 8 3/4 in.)
Credit Line: African and Amerindian Art Purchase Fund
Reference Number: 1961.555

Dominique Zahan, Societe d’Initiation Bambara (Paris: Mouton, 1960), pl. 3C.
Allen Wardwell, “Six New Acquisitions. Sculpture of the Bambara,” AIC Quarterly 56, 1 (March 1962), p. 3, fig. 4.
Charles H. Long, Alpha: The Myths of Creation (New York: George Braziller, 1963), pl. 19.
Allen Wardwell, Primitive Art in the Collections of the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago, 1965), fig. 59.
Allen Wardwell, “Some Notes on a Substyle of the Bambara,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 1 (1966), p. 121, figs. 16 and 17.
The Art of Black Africa, exh. cat. (Flint Institute of Arts Exhibition, 1970), cat. 6 (ill.).
Ezio Bassani, “Una bottega di grandi artisti Bambara, 1,” Critica d’Arte 43, fasc. 157-59 (Jan.-June 1978), p. 219, no. 31.
Ezio Bassani, “Una bottega di grandi artisti Bambara, 2,” Critica d’Arte 43, fasc. 160-162 (July-Dec. 1978), p. 188, figs. 41 and 42.
Kathleen Bickford Berzock, “Art of the Western Sudan; African Art at the Art Institute of Chicago,” The Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 23, 2 (1997), p. 112, fig. 5.
Kathleen Bickford Berzock, “African Art at the Art Institute of Chicago,” African Arts 32, 4 (Winter 1999), p. 28, fig. 13.
Constantine Petridis et al., Speaking of Objects: African Art at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2020), cat. no. 9, pp. 42-43 (ill.).

Denver Art Museum, Art of Africa, March 22-May 17, 1964.
Flint, Mich., Flint Institute of Arts, The Art of Black Africa, Feb. 8-April 5, 1970, cat. 6 (ill.).

Henri (died 1992) and Hélène (ex-Kamer) Leloup, Henri A. Kamer Gallery, New York, N.Y., by 1960 [Zahan 1960, pl. 3C, object listed as Collection Henri Kamer]; sold to the Art Institute, 1961 [purchase consideration documentation in object file].

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