"The gesture of balancing-which is talking about moving with confidence with an object balanced on your head-is again one of the accomplished gestures of traditional African sculpture. Sylvia Boone, my late and great colleague, once wrote that pride resides in having a load rest heavily on the head with an insouciant countenance that reveals no sign of pressure, no sign of strain while walking smoothly with the arms swinging free: that nonchalance which is the essence of cool." (Robert Farris Thompson, 2002)
Wood
22 1/4 x 4 x 5 3/4 in. (56.5 x 10.2 x 14.6 cm)
Gift of Katherine White and the Boeing Company
81.17.624
Not currently on view
Resources
Exhibition HistoryLos Angeles, California, Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery, University of California, African Art in Motion: Icon and Act, Jan. 20 - Mar. 17, 1974 (Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, May 5 - Sept. 22, 1974). Text by Robert Farris Thompson. No cat. no., pp. 102-3, reproduced pl. 140 (as fragment of a housepost).
Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Art from Africa: Long Steps Never Broke a Back, Feb. 7 - May 19, 2002. [Exhibition traveled to Philadelphia Museum of Art, Wadsworth Atheneum, Cincinnati Art Museum, and Frist Center for Visual Arts, but object not included.] Text by Pamela McClusky. No cat. no., pp. 58-59, reproduced pl. 35 (as Housepost (opo)).
Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.
