Giant Masks from the Congo at the Belvue Museum

On view until September 2 at the BELvue Museum in Brussels is Giant Masks from the Congo – A Belgian Jesuit ethnographic heritage, a collaborative exhibition courtesy of the Royal Museum of Central Africa, the Belgian Society of Jesus, BELvue Museum, and the King Baudouin Foundation. The installation will display a series of “giant” Yaka and Suku masks used during initiation rituals. Objects from the Heverlee missionary collections are complemented by masks and statues from the collections of Tervuren. 

For more information, visit the exhibition's official website.

Images courtesy of the BELvue Museum

Arts of Africa at the Mint Museum

The African continent has remarkable diversity in topographical features and ecology: three enormous rivers – Nile, Niger, and Congo – with countless tributaries; large, dense forests and hilly grasslands; huge deserts; and snowcapped mountains. Social and political systems, equally varied, range from great empires to small villages: large kingdoms and city-states, small chieftaincies, and nomadic bands of hunters or semi-nomadic herders. Thus there are many different Africas, and consequently, great diversity in the arts and their histories. Art forms date from 27,000 BCE to yesterday, with countless interactions among native Africans themselves over time; with Muslims, beginning around 1000 BCE; and with Europeans, beginning in the late 15th century. This exhibition is organized by The Mint Museum.

View the exhibition's official website.

Royal cap  -  Yoruba, Nigeria  -  20th century

Mask  -  Yaka, DR Congo  -  20th century

Antelope effigy  -  Edo, Nigeria  -  20th century

Information and images courtesy of The Mint Museum