With his removable head and enlarged belly, this figure may have stored medicines used as therapy to address not only physical pain, but the anger associated with it.
Wood and metal
11 7/8 x 3 11/16 x 5 1/8 in. (30.1 x 9.3 x 13 cm)
Gift of Katherine White and the Boeing Company
81.17.841
Photo: Paul Macapia
Now on view at the
Seattle Art Museum
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. 56-57, reproduced pl. 64 (as container in the form of a standing figure).
San Francisco, California, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, Kongo Power Figures, Nov. 15, 1989 - Jan. 21, 1990.
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. 143, 157-8, reproduced pl. 77.
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.
