Scry

Ifẹ̀

Naturalistic brass and terracotta heads from the Yorùbá city of Ifẹ̀, made around the twelfth to fifteenth century. They ended the lie that such likeness was beyond African hands.

The Met

More in Africa

The Benin BronzesBrass and ivory cast for the Ọba’s court of the Kingdom of Benin, from the sixteenth century on. Among the finest metalwork ever made. Looted in 1897.Open the collection →YorùbáSculpture, beadwork, and masks from the Yorùbá peoples of present-day Nigeria and Benin, a living tradition with centuries of depth behind it.Open the collection →NokTerracotta figures from central Nigeria, made roughly 900 BC to AD 200. The oldest known sculpture in West Africa, and proof of how far back the record goes.Open the collection →ÌgbòMasks, figures, and ritual objects from the Ìgbò peoples of southeastern Nigeria, made for the shrine, the masquerade, and the everyday.Open the collection →DogonWood figures and masks from the Dogon of Mali, carved along the Bandiagara cliffs, holding cosmology, ancestry, and the dead.Open the collection →AsanteGold, brass weights, and royal regalia from the Asante kingdom of present-day Ghana, the wealth and craft of a court the British set out to break.Open the collection →