Two Nigerian mask attributions

African Arts, Spring, 2004 by Sidney L. Kasfir

I would like to comment on two photographs that appeared in Christraud Geary's article, "The Incidental Photographer: Roy Sieber and His African Images," in part two of the memorial to Roy Sieber (African Arts, Summer 2003). It's true that the Ogrinye head (Fig. 21, p. 76) resides in Otobi (if it hasn't been stolen since T last saw it in 1989), but Otobi is in Akpa district of central Idomaland, not Igala. Roy Sieber was told it was by Ochai, yet it bears no resemblance to any other work I documented by this artist when I lived in Otobi, twenty years after Sieber's visit. What it does resemble is a Boki mask in the British Museum. The major clans of Akpa district came originally from the Ogoja region adjacent to Boki country.

The Idoma Adagba mask (Fig. 27, p. 81) is by an artist called Oklenyi of Akungaga village, whose work I documented in 1978 shortly before he died. There is also a mask and a seated figure by him in the Rockefeller collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met's mask has been borrowed by National Museum of African Art and appears in David Binkley's show "Playful Performers."

Sidney L. Kasfir

Department of Art History

Faculty Curator of African Art

Michael C. Carlos Museum

Emory University

Atlanta, Georgia