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Hunter's Vest

Photo: Paul Macapia

Hunter's Vest

A hunter's shirt visually defies its place in an art museum. Wild boar tusks, antelope horns, wads of dried mud, rusty stains, and bulging packets of leather bring a shadowy dose of forest ingredients into view. Among the lessons hunters' shirts reveal are Mande definitions of heroes and their unique way of handling knowledge and discussing sorcery.

A hunter's shirt speaks of a life largely spent in the wilderness, away from people. Hunters become acquainted with the habits of animals and reptiles after spending days, weeks, and months in their company. They learn to recognize ecological zones; use leaves, roots, and barks of plants; and discern the properties of bones, claws, skins, and organs of animals. More than one hundred years ago, the Manden plateau was home to wild boar, baboons, lions, anteaters, roan antelope, hartebeest, bushback, leopards, hippopotami, buffalo, elephants, giant eland, and giraffes. Each creature had to be tracked and approached differently.
Cotton with horn, leather, mud, cord, and resin
29 5/16 x 3 1/2 in. (74.4 x 8.9 cm)
L.: 58 11/16 in.
Gift of Katherine White and the Boeing Company
81.17.70
Provenance: {Possibly collection of Georges Rodriguez (location unknown)}; sold to Katherine White (1929-1980), Seattle, Washington, 1972; bequeathed to Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, 1981
Photo: Paul Macapia
location
Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistoryNew York, New York, Museum of Modern Art, African Textiles and Decorative Arts, Oct. 11, 1972 - Jan. 11, 1973 (Los Angeles, California, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Mar. 20 - May 31, 1973; San Francisco, California, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, July 2 - Aug. 31, 1973; Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland Museum of Art, Oct. 3 - Dec. 2, 1973).

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, African Panoplies: Art for Rulers, Traders, Hunters, and Priests, Apr. 21 - Aug. 14, 1988.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Art from Africa: Long Steps Never Broke a Back, Feb. 7 - May 19, 2002 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Oct. 2, 2004 - Jan. 2, 2005; Hartford, Connecticut, Wadsworth Atheneum, Feb. 12 - June 19, 2005; Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Art Museum, Oct. 8, 2005 - Jan. 1, 2006; Nashville, Tennessee, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Jan. 27 - Apr. 30, 2006 [as African Art, African Voices: Long Steps Never Broke a Back]). Text by Pamela McClusky. No cat. no., pp. 62-63, 67, 69, 70, reproduced pl. 36.

Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland Museum of Art, Senufo Unbound: Dynamics of Art and Identity in West Africa, Feb. 22 - May 31, 2015 (St. Louis, Missouri, Saint Louis Art Museum, June 28 - Sept. 27, 2015; Montpellier, France, Musée Fabre, Nov. 28 2015 - Mar. 6, 2016). Text by Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi. Cat. no. 200, reproduced p. 263.
Published ReferencesKreamer, Christine Mullen. A Tribute to Roy Sieber, Part 1, in African Arts, Vol. 36, No. 1, Memorial to Roy Sieber, Part 1 (Spring 2003), pp. 12-23, 91; p. 20, fig. 14

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, African Textiles and Decorative Arts, Roy Sieber, 1972, pp. 48, 49. (catalog of the exhibition)

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.

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