Gèlèdé Society Helmet Mask

Artist Yoruba Peoples, Ketu Region, Republic of Benin (African)

Place of OriginNigeria

Dateearly-mid 20th century

Dimensions20 in. (50.8 cm)

Mediumwood with pigment

ClassificationSculpture

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1970.52

Not on View

Label TextThe Gèlèdé spectacle is a public display of colorful masks danced by men to honor elderly, ancestral, or deified women who possess heightened spiritual knowledge. All Gèlèdé masks consist of a regal human face, “the face of equanimity,” surmounted by a tray that serves as a stage for projecting the ideals of the Gèlèdé society. The blacksmithing scene above the queenly female face on this helmet mask is a metaphor for birth. The ability to change raw metal into useful weapons and tools is compared with the act of creation itself, the secret of which belongs to women alone.Published References

"African Art," Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, vol 16, no. 2, 1973, p. 37, repr. fig. 9.

Armstrong, Robert Plant, The Powers of Presence, Philadelphia, 1981, repr. pl. 8.

Roberts, Mary Nooter, Facing Africa: The African Art Collection of the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, 1998, pp. 14-15, repr. (col.).

Exhibition History

Toledo Museum of Art, Student Curators Present: African Art, April 27-July 24, 2012 (Hitchcock Gallery).

Comparative ReferencesSee also Wassing, Rene, African Art, its Background and Traditions, New York, Abrams, 1968, p. 137, pl. XIX, p. 233, cat. no. 8, (ill.).

cf. Trowell, Margaret and Hans Nevermann, African and Oceanic Art, New York, Abrams, 1968, p. 32, (ill.) p. 33.

cf. Leuzinger, Elsy, Africa, the Art of the Negro Peoples, New York, Crown Publishers, Inc., 1967, p. 31, p. 120, fig. 120.

cf. Robbins, Warren M., African Art in American Collections, New York, Praeger, 1971, p. 67, pl. 38.

cf. Wardwell, Allen, Primitive Art in the Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1965, cat. no. 66, (ill.).

cf. Plass, Margaret, The African Image, Toledo Museum of Art, 1959, p. 17, no. 84 (ill.).