Mask

MANGAN VILLAGE, LOWER SEPIK, PAPUA NEW GUINEA

19th century

Height: 36.5cm – Length: 18cm – Depth: 12cm

Wood, Plant fiber, Rattan, Natural pigments

Masks were, and in some cases remain, a central element of male religious life among the peoples of the Lower Sepik region in northeast New Guinea. Dance masks, typically representing powerful spirits, were used in a diversity of ceremonial contexts, either worn directly on the face or, in many instances, attached to a larger basketry framework placed over the wearer’s head. source: metmuseum.org

Provenance

This Sepik mask was collected by Societas Verbi Divini (SVD) missionaries in the lower Sepik area of New Guinea, early in the 20th century.
The back of the mask contains a text in pencil, referring to its collection location: “Vom Topo Mangan”, i.e. from the place Mangan.
Mangan is a small village in the Lower Sepik area, situated about 3 kilometers east of the Marienberg Mission station, established by SVD missionaries in 1913.
The mask was used in one of the various kinds of dances for Mangan village, described by Yukio Toyoda (1987).
The mask was once part of the collection of the SVD missionary museum in Teteringen, the Netherlands.
The SVD had established an official “missiemuseum” in Teteringen in 1933 (Holman 2006), from ethnographic objects, “curios”, already present in the mission house (founded in 1915), sent to Teteringen by former students and missionaries in New Guinea and elsewhere.
It was on loan to the ‘Nederlandsch Volkenkundig Missie-Museum’ in Tilburg, the Netherlands, from 1935 until 1986.
When this museum closed in 1986, the loan was returned to the SVD in Teteringen.

Publication(s)

Sandberg, Willem J.H.B. 1949. Kunst van het Zuidzeegebied, (Art from the South Sea area). Pr; stadsdrukkerij. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, p 12

Exhibition(s)

The mask was on permanent display in the ‘Nederlandsch Volkenkundig Missie-Museum’ in Tilburg, the Netherlands, from 1935 until 1986.
The mask was exhibited in ‘Het Museum voor Land- en Volkenkunde’ in Rotterdam (now called ‘Wereldmuseum’) and in the ‘Stedelijk Museum’ in Amsterdam in 1949. It was also published in the publication of the exhibition.