The Metropolitan Museum of art, New York - new acquisitions

African Arts, Summer, 2001 by Alisa LaGamma

Wood masks are linked to all important events in Bwa village life. They appear at events ranging from initiations of young men and women to commemorative funerary ceremonies. The creation of new masks occurs during the dry season and is the occasion for an annual celebration at which they are inaugurated. Performances are organized by individual clans that compete with one another to present the most elaborate and innovative displays.

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ALISA LAGAMMA is Assistant Curator in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. She spent 1993 in Gabon and the Republic of the Congo conducting research for her doctorate in African art history and archaeology, which she received from Columbia University in 1995.