Face Mask

This is one of six Dan masks that Hutchings bought for the museum in the 1960s, because he wanted to “illustrate important stylistic variations”, which he thought would be “very useful in teaching African art”. Such ideas probably show the influence of an important German ethnologist called Hans Himmelheber, whose 1960 publication on African art and artists was ground breaking in the way it documented the creative individuality of named Dan wood sculptors.