THE BANGWA QUEEN. A Journey into Art History.

OBJECT history The name FIG. 1 (right): Lefem figure of an anyi, known as the “Bangwa Queen.” Bangwa region, Cameroon. 19th century. Wood. H: 82 cm. Collected by Gustav Conrau in the Bangwa region, 1899. Ex Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin (inv. III-C10529); Arthur Speyer, Berlin; Charles Ratton, Paris; Helena Rubinstein, Paris and New York; Parke-Bernet, New York, 29 April 1966, lot 189; Harry Franklin, Beverly Hills; Sotheby’s, New York, 21 April 1990, lot 127. Fondation Dapper, Paris, inv. DP 8073. “Bangwa Queen” was coined in the late 1960s by Harry Franklin, the Beverly Hills gallery owner who had acquired the striking wooden figure of a woman singing and dancing at the 1966 auction of the Helena Rubinstein estate. That sale was held in New York at Parke-Bernet Galleries, which would shortly thereafter be merged with Sotheby’s. It was the time of the civil rights movement and of social upheaval, and the three-session sale1 of Rubinstein’s African collection garnered considerable attention. The catalog was quite unassuming compared with the ones we see produced today, but it is scarce and has considerable value today. Standing at just 82 centimeters in height, the relatively small yet imposing sculpture of the woman from Cameroon entered as lot 189 was the most expensive lot in the auction, fetching $29,000.2 She is depicted wearing a Another sculpture, strikingly similar to the male figure, is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (FIG. 12),4 and a female figure in comparable style but with less sense of motion is held by the Yale University Art Gallery (FIG. 13).5 The field collector, researcher, colonial agent, and merchant Gustav Conrau (FIG. 4), wrote in a letter to Felix von Luschan (FIG. 5), the curator at the time of what was then known as the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin (FIG. 14), that former owners often gave him unclear or inaccurate information when he purchased objects from them, a fact that is reflected in the earliest documentation of these objects.6 Conrau depended on local translators in the Cameroonian Highlands, where he lived among local peoples for many years, usually as the only European in the area. He visited the Western Bangwa for the first THE BANGWA QUEEN A A Journey into Art History By Bettina von Lintig FIG. 2 (above and right): Publications featuring the Bangwa Queen as cover image. • Tamara Northern, Expressions of Cameroon Art: The Franklin Collection, Rembrandt Press, 1986. • Tamara Northern, The Art of Cameroon, Smithsonian Inst. Press, 1984. • Christiane Falgayrettes-Leveau, Arts d’Afrique, Edition Gallimard, Musée Dapper, 2000. • Lorenz Homberger (ed.), Cameroon: Art and Kings, Museum Rietberg, 2008. 106 cap, a predator-tooth necklace around her neck, and ivory bangles on her arms, all indicators of her rank and status (FIG. 1). The cover of the book Expressions of Cameroon Art: The Franklin Collection (FIG. 2), which was published in 1986, shows the “Bangwa Queen” emerging from a colorful background of pop-art graphics in which she is repeated in serial imagery, highlighting her relevance to the art scene of the time.3 In that publication, she is reunited with her Cameroonian portrait figure counterpart, a male figure rendered with the insignia of a high-ranking ruler—a high knobbed cap, bead necklaces with predator teeth, arm rings, a calabash, and leopard hide strips around the ankles. This sculpture was similarly dubbed by Franklin as the “Bangwa King” (FIG. 11). Though the two sculptures are attributed to the same anonymous Cameroonian Grasslands artist, it is not clear that the two figures were ever intended to be partners. time in late 1898. His interpreters spoke a neighboring dialect and hardly any German or English.7 Beginning in February of 1899, Conrau spent several months in the Bangwa area, where he did research and assembled collections of ethnografica, as well as of botanical and zoological specimens. Conrau was in occasional contact with German academics through written correspondence, and he had been in Germany between April and August of 1898 and met with von Luschan in Berlin.8 A plan to visit the Bangwa area may have been in place for some time, with the intention that the region would become a staging area for further penetration into the Cameroonian interior. According to anthropologist Robert Brain, Fontem Assunganyi, the highest-ranking Bangwa chief (FIG. 3), was clearly important and had a huge compound of wives (more than a hundred) and countless retainers (ex-slaves), and his meeting with Conrau was seen as an encounter between two great chiefs.9 Assunganyi consequently allowed the German merchant to proceed with his work, namely to pursue research and to trade European goods 107 OBJECT HISTORY TOP ROW, left to right FIG. 3: Assunganyi, before 1950. BANGWA QUEEN FIG. 5: Felix von Luschan (1854–1924). From Brain/Pollock, 1971. Zeitschrift “Berliner Leben,” Heft 02, 1907. FIG. 4: Gustav Conrau, c. 1892. FIG. 6: Arthur Max Heinrich Speyer, c. 1932. From Elizabeth Chilver, Zintgraff’s Explorations in Bamenda, Adamawa, and the Benue Lands, 1899–1892, Victoria, 1966. Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s. BOTTOM ROW, left to right FIG. 7: Charles Ratton, c. 1935. Photo: Studio Harcourt, Paris. FIG. 8: Helena Rubinstein with African Mask. Photo by G. M. Kesslere, c. 1935. FIG. 9: Harry and Ruth Franklin. Image courtesy of Sotheby’s. FIG. 10: Logo for the Fondation Dapper, Paris. Fondation Dapper. Helena Rubinstein Foundation archive, Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, Special Colls. FIG. 11 (right): Lefem figure of a chief, known as the “Bangwa King.” Bangwa region, Cameroon. 19th century. Wood. H: 89 cm. Collected by Gustav Conrau in the Bangwa region, 1899. Ex Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin (inv. III-C10518); Arthur Speyer (II and III), Berlin, Harry Franklin, Beverly Hills; Sotheby’s New York, 21 April 1990, lot 128; private collection; Christie’s, Paris, 4 December 2009. Private collection. Photo courtesy of Christie’s. FIG. 12 (far right): Lefem figure of a chief. Bangwa region, Cameroon. 19th–early 20th century. Wood, organic matter, fiber. H: 102.2 cm. Ex Henri Kamer, Paris and New York, until 1968; The Museum of Primitive Art, New York, 1968–1978. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Purchase, Nelson A. Rockefeller Gift, 1965, inv. 1978.412.576. he had brought against local ones with the people of the area.10 However, Conrau’s main source of income at the time was his job as a colonial agent. Assunganyi agreed to let Conrau take Bangwa men to work at the coastal plantations without understanding the implications and hazards, and when they did not come back, he refused to let Conrau return to the colonial capital of Buea until they did.11 Conrau died in late 1899, apparently by his own hand, as a result of the complexities arising from this transaction. Both of the figures noted above, the “king” and the “queen,” were entered into the Berlin museum’s inventory in 1899, two of seventy-one objects collected by Conrau during his stays in the Bangwa area and sent by him to the museum. A careful look at the accession books of that year reveals some interesting details that bear upon the historical trajectory of the Bangwa Queen. 108 The female Bangwa figure was entered into the museum’s accession book as inv. III C 10529. Its height was correctly noted as 82 centimeters, and an annotation presumably based on Conrau’s notes mentions “manyon” as an indigenous reference followed by “left hand broken off.” In the space immediately below this entry, there is another for inv. III C 10530, “height 94 centimeters,” with the simple note “as above.” Nothing appears to be known about the fate of this object, save that it can no longer be found in the Berlin collection. Was there once another Bangwa Queen, 12 centimeters taller than the one whose history and social biography we are examining here? In the next entry, immediately below these two (inv. III C 10531), the annotation “nyui ndem” appears, as does the mention “the same with child” and “height: 79 cm.” These notes reflect those made by Conrau in the field. This mother and child sculpture is still in the Berlin collection 109 OBJECT HISTORY and until recently it was on view in the museum’s permanent exhibition in its Dahlem location.12 The figure is adorned around the neck and the back of the head with carved representations of cowrie shell emblems, which are the insignia of the mothers of twins. Ngwi ndem, which “nyui ndem” is presumably referencing, means “woman of god” (mother of twins) in the local language.13 The 80-centimeter-high male “king” figure (inv. III C 10518) carries the annotation “atanyu” in the inventory book listing and is otherwise similar to the entry directly above it. That one (inv. III C 10517) carries the annotation “defam,” which could be an alternate or incorrect spelling of lefem, the indigenous term by which such royal commemorative figures are known. Taking inventory of ethnological collections and examining and verifying the often-perfunctory entries in the records can be a laborious process. However, it is a necessary one, in this case because a great deal of information about the Bangwa Queen has come to surround her based on interpretive fantasy rather than fact. For example, it is sometimes erroneously asserted that the Bangwa Queen was looted from a sanctuary by a German punitive expedition, well after Conrau’s final visit with Assunganyi and his acquisitions in the region. In fact, the objects that Conrau collected entered the Berlin collection in 1899,14 while the punitive expedition in question, a response to Conrau’s death, did not begin until 1900. There is no question that the arrival of a European in the Bangwa region15 in the late nineteenth century brought about a collision of inherently incompatible worldviews and that it had catastrophic consequences. Upon his arrival, Conrau immediately began to collect, classify, inventory, and analyze the objects of what to him was a foreign culture. The African ruler did not realize the extent and scope of the newcomer’s acquisitiveness, whether in art, labor, political influence, or natural resources, and he was satisfied to grant his initial demands in exchange for the finest quality glass beads.16 With these, he would be able to produce even more beautiful and dazzling examples of his embroidered and overlaid insignia that would cause his peers from other kingdoms to significantly elevate their respect for him. By the time he realized his underestimation, events he could not stop were already in motion. 110 BANGWA QUEEN The visual language of the Cameroon art had a cultural impact in Germany after it was brought there. Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, a member of the expressionist Die Brücke (The Bridge) group, stated that, in hindsight, the sculptures from Cameroon in the Dresden and Berlin ethnology museums had a significant artistic influence on himself and on Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and that he and Kirchner both began to sculpt figuratively after they had seen those objects.17 The Bangwa Queen, in particular, especially inspired Kirchner, a painter, to create wood sculptures of women in 1910 that borrowed and even mirrored the imagery and compositional techniques of his anonymous Cameroonian colleague (FIG. 15).18 Art historian and ethnologist Eckart von Sydow dedicated the first edition of his 1923 magnum opus Die Kunst der Naturvoelker und der Vorzeit19 to Schmidt-Rottluff. The Bangwa Queen is illustration 159 in this work (FIG. 17) and is mentioned several times in the text. The ethnocentric description she is given here more or less assures her a place in Western art history. He describes her as a magnificent piece of sculpture and recognizes a kind of African baroque style in the rotating movement with which she is rendered.20 Up to this point, the Bangwa Queen and the other objects that Conrau collected had been confined to the shadows of the Berlin Völkerkunde museum, where they were little known save to a few “insiders.” With von Sydow’s work, others now had to pay attention to these sculptures. Conditions in the museum appear to have been so overcrowded in the 1920s that a clear compilation of its inventory was impossible, and a critic at the time noted that there were hundreds of examples of certain object types.21 As a result, in order to expand the collection in directions in which it was weaker, redundant pieces were sometimes sold or FIG. 13 (below): Lefem figure of an ngwindem. Bangwa region, Cameroon. 19th–early 20th century. FIG. 14 (left): Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin. C. 1900. Printed postcard. Private collection. Wood. H: 79 cm. Philippe Guimiot, Brussels, after 1965–April 20, 1977; Charles B. Benenson Collection, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1977–2004. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, inv. 2006.51.176. Photo courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery. FIG. 15 (left): Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938), Tänzerin mit Halskette (Dancer with Necklace), 1910. Wood, paint. H: 54.3 cm. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, inv. M.2015.40. Purchased with funds provided by the Robert Halff Endowment Fund, Modern and Contemporary Art Acquisition Endowment Fund, Modern Art Acquisition Fund, Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation, Modern Art Deaccession Fund, and LACMA’s 50th Anniversary Gala, in honor of Stephanie Barron, the museum’s Senior Curator of Modern Art. FIG. 16 (above): Portrait figure of a chief. Batie, eastern Bangwa region, Cameroon. 19th century. Wood, pigment. H: 90 cm. Collected by Hans Glauning in the Bangwa region, c. 1900. Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. III C 21058. FIG. 17 (left): The Bangwa figure as first published in 1923. Eckart von Sydow, Der Naturvölker und der Vorzeit. Im Propyläen-Verlag zu Berlin, 1923. Legend reads: Weibliche Ahnengestalt der Bangwa (Bezirk Dschang, Kameruner Grasland). Berlin, M.f.V., III C 10529. Holz. Mit einem Trinkgefaß in der Hand. Linke Hand abgebrochen. H.: 82 cm. (Female ancestor of Bangwa (Dschang district, Cameroon Grassfields). Berlin, M.f.V., III C 10529. Wood. With a drinking vessel in her hand. Left hand absent. H.: 82 cm). 111 PORTFOLIO traded during this time period, and the Bangwa Queen was one of these. As Jonathan Fogel, editor in chief of Tribal Art magazine recently noted, “Many people are perplexed as to why the museum would have traded away such an object.” Could it be, as has been mentioned above, that there may have been another and possibly undamaged figure of the same type—the mysterious 94-centimeter figure that was entered as inv. III C 10530? Jonathan Fine, curator of the African collection in Berlin, has speculated that while the museum was getting rid of what it considered to be inferior duplicates, the object it retained in preference to the Bangwa Queen was a male ancestor figure (FIG. 16) that had been collected by German colonial military officer Hans Glauning (1868–1908).22 For whatever reason, in 1929 the Bangwa Queen was exchanged for two Yaka masks from what at the time was the Belgian Congo, owned by the collector and art dealer Arthur Max Heinrich Speyer (1894–1958) (FIG. 6).23 While this may strike us today as a remarkably lopsided transaction, it should be remembered that Germany was then suffering crippling inflation and its currency was nearly worthless, so barter was a matter of perceived opportunity.24 In addition to the Bangwa female figure, Speyer was also able to obtain, undoubtedly also through trade, four other objects from Conrau’s Bangwa collection: the aforementioned male lefem figure of a chief, a lefem post figure, and two other male figures, one of them in a seated position.25 By 1934 Speyer had sold the female Bangwa figure to the French dealer Charles Ratton (FIG. 7).26 Within a few years, cosmetics magnate Hele- 112 BANGWA QUEEN na Rubinstein (FIG. 8) acquired it from him, adding it to her substantial collection of African art. It resided in her Paris apartment, where it was photographed before WWII (FIG. 18). Speyer’s son, Arthur, inherited the “Bangwa King” from his father.27 Like the queen, it came into the collection of the Franklin family in Beverly Hills (FIG. 9); however, they obtained it in the 1970s directly from the younger Speyer, who was, like his father, closely connected with the international network of museums, collectors, and dealers. His particular area of interest was the Indians of North America. It is revealing to compare the auction results that the Bangwa Queen and the Bangwa King later obtained. The king has an expressive head, a powerful face, and his slightly rotating posture suggests he is dancing. He is perhaps a somewhat less successful example of statuary than the female figure, whose sculptural qualities are truly remarkable, but he isn’t second best by much. On April 21, 1990, the Franklin Collection, including the Bangwa Queen and the Bangwa King, was offered at Sotheby’s in New York (FIG. 19). The king, lot 128, made $330,000, while FIG. 18 (top): Helena Rubinstein’s apartment on Île SaintLouis, before 1939. The Bangwa Queen is visible in the niche at center. Photographer unknown. FIG. 19 (above): Cover of the catalog for the sale of the Harry A. Franklin Collection at Sotheby’s, New York, 21 April 1990. Image courtesy of Sotheby’s. FIG. 20 (right): Sabine Dauwe of Sotheby’s with the Bangwa figure, 1990. Silver print with hand annotation. Promo photo for 1990 Sotheby’s sale. J. M. Fogel Collection from The Daily Telegraph archive. Photo © Sotheby’s. the queen, lot 127, fetched $3,410,000, the highest paid for a work of African art at auction and a record that would stand for some two decades. The high price the ngwi ndem28 brought was, as others have already noted, the result of its extensive “social biography” and the trajectory it followed after it left the Berlin museum. The fact that the Bangwa Queen became what she did is attributable to the actions of various protagonists in the art world, who used her as a touchstone for a remarkable number of projects. Charles Ratton, who was close to the Surrealist circle, commissioned Man Ray to photograph the sculpture after he had acquired it from Speyer. The photographer experimented with various lighting schemes and took shots from above as well as with single- and double-shadow configurations (FIG. 21) and against a blackened background.29 Two other images from Man Ray’s series show the Bangwa Queen together with a scantily dressed young woman (figs. 22 and 23).30 In one of them, the pair casts furtive shadows onto the wall. In both photographs, the two subjects are physically close to one another—in actual contact in one—and the compositions follow the Surrealist predilection for the representation of contradiction and incompatibility. Here, the Bangwa Queen is the objet trouvé (the “found object”). This surrealistic depiction of a wooden African statue juxtaposed with an attractive and provocative woman was probably not part of the work Ratton commissioned from Man Ray. The closeup image appeared in Paris magazine as an illustration in an erotic article titled “Une nuit de Singapour” (A Singapore Night).31 The object was obviously completely out of its context here, but it stood as a broad placeholder for the exotic. The second image from the series, which shows the unknown model’s seated body in near entirety next to the standing Bangwa Queen, was not made into a developed print until after Man Ray’s death.32 A promo photo for the 1990 Sotheby’s sale (FIG. 20) provides an interesting visual riff on these Man Ray images. Man Ray took on various commercial jobs as a photographer during his time in Paris, and they FIG. 21 (left): Man Ray (1890–1976), Untitled (The Bangwa Queen), c. 1934. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy of Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York. © Man Ray Trust – SABAM Belgium, 2019. Note Charles Ratton’s blind stamp at upper left. FIG. 22 (below): Man Ray (1890–1976), Helena’s Statue, “The Bangwa Queen,” c. 1935. Gelatin silver print. 29.7 x 23 cm. Courtesy of Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York. © Man Ray Trust – SABAM Belgium, 2019. Note Charles Ratton’s blind stamp at upper left. 113 BANGWA QUEEN FIG. 23 (left): Man Ray (1890–1976), Helena’s Statue, “The Bangwa Queen” (second version), c. 1935. © Man Ray Trust – SABAM Belgium, 2019. FIG. 24 (below): Man Ray (1890–1976), Adrienne Fidelin (from La Mode au Congo series), c. 1936. Gelatin silver print. From Harper’s Bazaar, 1937. © Man Ray Trust – SABAM Belgium, 2019. mirror and display the influence of the artistic milieu in which he lived and worked. He did shoots for a number of American magazines and was a principal photographer for Harper’s Bazaar.33 An exhibition titled La mode au Congo (Fashion in the Congo) was held at Ratton’s gallery in the spring of 1937, and Man Ray was inspired to produce a series of images of women wearing unusual headdresses. This was published in connection with text by Paul Eluard in a feature called “The Bushongo of Africa Sends His Hats to Paris.” 114 One of the images from this is particularly notable in relation to the subject at hand. It shows Adrienne Fidelin, who was Man Ray’s companion at the time. She was a dancer from Guadeloupe and had African roots. Man Ray used this assignment to show a humorous irreverence for conventions and as an opportunity to mix the commercial and the artistic by seductively breaking taboos. Adi, as she was known, is shown wearing African jewelry in the form of a necklace with lion and leopard teeth and elephant ivory bangles, all of which are insignia of a Cameroon Grasslands chief, which a mafwa, or chief’s sister, also had the right to wear (FIG. 24).34 Man Ray probably would not have known these specific details of Cameroon regalia, but these ornaments are the same as those seen on the Bangwa Queen, which he had recently photographed. It should be noted that only a portion of the photo appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, cropped in such a way that the model’s exposed upper body was concealed, and with this image Adi became the first black model to be published in a mainstream fashion magazine. The difference between the photographs Man Ray took in Paris and those taken by Walker Evans of the Bangwa Queen in connection with the New York MoMA African Negro Art exhibition of 1935 are obvious. Evans shot her frontally, in such a way that her damaged arm would be visible. In what is, generally speaking, his typical style, he takes a documentary approach to the lighting for his subject (FIG. 25).35 African Negro Art (FIG. 26) was the first of many exhibitions in which she was to appear. Notable among the others were the 1954 Masterpieces of African Art (FIG. 27) and the 1970 African Sculpture (FIG. 28), both at the Brooklyn Museum; Afrique: 100 Tribus, 100 Chefs d’Oeuvre at the Louvre in 1965; Heroic Africans: Legendary Leaders, Iconic Sculptures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2011; Femmes dans les arts d’Afrique (2008) and Chefs d’Oeuvre d’Africa (2016) at the Musée Dapper. She was an occasional guest star at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art during the Franklin years and is featured on the covers of the catalogs for the exhibitions The Art of Cameroon, which began its traveling itinerary at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution in 1984, Arts d’Afrique at the Dapper in 2000, and Cameroon: Art and Kings at the Museum Ri- etberg in 2008. She also made an appearance in the 1953 movie Les statues meurent aussi (FIG. 29) and is presently featured in Helena Rubinstein: La Collection de Madame at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. What is the secret of the Bangwa Queen? She seems to have “wandered” from one high-profile context to the next as she established and cemented a place for herself in art history. When with a heavy heart, the Franklins’ daughter, Valerie, separated from her and from her male counterpart via Sotheby’s in 1990, the Bangwa Queen was consigned to the care of the Fondation Dapper in Paris (FIG. 10), which holds her for the time being. What her future trajectory will be, and whether it might ultimately even take her back to Fontem in Cameroon, remains to be seen. FIG. 25 (below): Walker Evans (1903–1976), African Sculpture [Bamileke figure, Njuindem. “Bangwa Queen,” Bangwa Kingdom, Cameroon], 1935. Gelatin silver print. 23 × 10.2 cm. Art Institute of Chicago, Restricted gift of John A. Bross in memory of Louise Smith Bross, inv. 2016.124. BIBLIOGRAPHY Brain, Robert and Adam Pollock. Bangwa Funerary Sculpture. London, 1971. DeFabo, Julia Lynn. “The Bangwa Queen: Interpretations, Constructions, and Appropriations of Meaning of the Esteemed Ancestress Figure from the Cameroon Grassfields” (Senior Projects Spring 2014, Paper 14). http:// digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_ s2014/14. Grossman, Wendy. Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens. Washington, DC, 2009, pp. 20–21. LaGamma, Alisa. Heroic Africans: Legendary Leaders, Iconic Sculptures (exhibition catalog). Zurich, New York, 2011. Malcolm-Ensor, Rachel. “A Child of Its Time: Kirchner and the Bangwa.” Harvard Conference on International History (manuscript), 2002. Murphy, Maureen. “Voyage d’une reine bangwa dans l’imaginaire occidental.” Afrique: Archéologie et arts 4, 2006. Northern, Tamara (ed.). Expressions of Cameroon Art: The Franklin Collection., Hanover, NH, 1986. Patterson, Sala. “Adrienne Fidelin: Man Ray’s ‘Missing Muse’ Was the First Black Model in an American Fashion Magazine.” Griot, March 9, 2017. Pechstein, Max. Erinnerungen, 47. Wiesbaden, 1960. Scheffler, Karl. Berliner Museumskrieg, Berlin, 1921. Schulz, Martin. “Arthur Speyer – Drei Generationen Sammler und Haendler,” Kunst & Kontext, 2016. 115 BANGWA QUEEN von Lintig, Bettina. “On the Bangwa Collection Formed by Gustav Conrau.” Tribal Art 86, Winter 2017. ———. “From Fontem to Berlin. The Long Journey of a Fontem Lefem Staff.” Tribal Art 76, Summer 2015, pp. 130f. von Sydow. Die Kunst der Naturvoelker und der Vorzeit; Eckart von Sydow, Berlin, 1932. Webb, Virginia Lee. Perfect Documents: Walker Evans and African Art, 1935, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2000. CORRESPONDENCE IfL–Leipzig 1898/99: Archiv des Leibnitz-Instituts für Länderkunde, NL Kurt Hassert. 201/45 & 46 Two Letters from Gustav Conrau to Kurt Hassert, Minden 1898 and Bangwa 1899. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: Archiv der Abteilung Afrika, Acta Africa, vols. 19, 20, 21, 22 Correspondence between G. Conrau and F. v. Luschan 1898–1899. NOTES 1. The sale had two catalogs: a two-part one for the sessions on April 21 and 29, 1966, and a separate one for the third session on October 15, 1966. 2. The Bangwa statue was sold for $29,000 on April 29, 1966. In the first part of the Rubinstein estate auction on April 21, 1966, a female Senufo figure had brought $27,000 and a Bambara dance headdress had made $24,000 (See DeFabo, 2014: 49f). 3. Northern, 1986. 4. Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 1978.412.576, owned by Henri Kamer until 1968, when it was purchased by Nelson Rockefeller for the Museum of Primitive Art. 5. Yale University Art Gallery, inv. 2006.51.176. Ex Philippe Guimiot, Brussels, after 1965–April 20, 1977; Charles B. Benenson Collection, Greenwich, Conn., 1977–2004. 6. “I bought the other fetishes in the Bangwa area. The chief allowed people to sell these things to me after I had given him very sizeable gifts. They are all old pieces that the people have little interest in. The newer fetishes, namely those of the chief of Fontem, are now mostly covered with beads. I was given the names of the figures but I cannot vouch for their correctness, [illegible] because my interpreter said that some of the female figures had male names. The people 116 FIG. 26 (above): Installation view of the exhibition African Negro Art, March 18–May 19, 1935, at MoMA in New York. Photograph by Soichi Sunami. Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. IN39.5. continued to insist that these were the figures’ names. [...] so I believe that they deliberately give incorrect information. What I can say with certainty is that they generally had a protective function. [...] Above all, they could ward off the evil magic people could be cursed with. Every illness is of course attributed to magical spells.” (Acta Africa, vol. 21 Victoria (Buea) October 1, 1899; arrived in the museum on October 25, 1899). 7. He was underway with a crew: “I have a staff of nine people. Almost all are from the interior here, except for one Vai man from Liberia.” Letter to Kurt Hassert, Bangwa 12 VI 99 (Ifl-Leipzig, Hassert estate, Conrau letter 201/ 46). 8. Von Lintig, 2017. 9. This is Robert Brain’s assessment (personal communication, September 2019). 10. This, at any rate, is how Conrau described the situation in an exchange of correspondence with Felix von Luschan (Acta Africa, vol. 21 - Victoria (Buea), October 1, 1899. The letter arrived in Berlin on October 25, 1899; see also footnote 8). 11. Personal communication, Robert Brain, September 2019. 12. The museum’s new location in the Humboldt Forum in the Mitte district will open in 2020. 13. Brain/Pollock 1971: 124, 125, plate 58, and p. 57, fig. 15. A very similar ngwi ndem figure entered the Linden Museum in 1903 (inv. 33508). It was collected by Lieutenant v. Houben. The other objects mentioned here were collected by Gustav Conrau between the end of 1898 and 1899 in the so-called “Bangwa area.” 14. See correspondence between Conrau and von Luschan (Acta Africa, vol. 20, Kamerun, 18 February 1899; vol. 21, Bangwa, 11 June 1899; vol. 22, Kamerun, 3 September 1899: vol. 21; Victoria, 1 October 1899). 15. Bangwa was not an indigenous term for an area but one introduced by Europeans to designate an administrative zone. 16. In a letter to Felix von Luschan, Conrau writes that old things are not worth much to their owners and that newer things are now all covered with beads. He adds that they were willing to part with the older objects because the chief had allowed them to (see also footnotes 8 and 14). 17. Pechstein 1960: 47 (quoted by Malcolm-Ensor, 2002, page 3). 18. Malcolm-Ensor, 2002. 19. Von Sydow 1923/von Sydow 1927/von Sydow 1932. The 1932 edition is dedicated to Baron Eduard von der Heydt. 20. von Sydow 1932: 36, #159. 21. Scheffler 1921: 20f. “From a certain point of view, this museum is also very good for Germany’s reputation. The prehistoric collections are known to connoisseurs as the best in Germany, and the ethnology department as a whole is considered the best anywhere.” The critic’s objections to the presentation are given in a long-winded listing of the items in the collection that makes it clear how overcrowded the museum was. 22. Jonathan Fogel, editor in chief of Tribal Art magazine, personal communication, September 2019. 23. Murphy, 2006, “Voyage d’une reine bangwa dans l’imaginaire occidental,” Afrique: Archéologie et arts 4 (2006), page 25. Note that Speyer’s father, Arthur Karl Hans Friedrich August Speyer (1858–1923), the first of three generations of Arthur Speyers who collected and dealt in ethnographic art, was an entomologist before he switched to ethnology (Schulz 2016: 5f). 24. Jonathan Fogel, personal communication, October 2019. 25. Copy of original inventory book: #IIIC 10516, 10518, 10519, 10529, 10544; see also von Lintig, 2015. 26. LaGamma, 2011, page 276, footnote 29. 27. Arthur Speyer III, personal communication, 1990s. 28. This is the designation Robert Brain uses for the female figure (Brain/Pollock 1971: 124). 29. There are four photographs that show only the Bangwa Queen: two in profile, one from the back, and the fourth from above. In one of these photos the background is black, and in the others, it alternates between light and shadows (see illustration in Grossmann, 2008: 20/21). 30. “In this provocative image the art object itself is no longer the principal focus” (Grossman 2008, page 134/5, #101– 103). “African objects became foils for representation of the female body at that time,” says Grossman (idem). 31. Paris magazine no. 42, February 1935: 109, 113. 32. The alternative version, in which not only the woman’s torso but nearly her entire seated body is seen as she contemplates the Bangwa Queen, was printed posthumously with the consent of Man Ray’s wife. Both photographs were not considered in a scholarly context and in research on Man Ray until recently (Grossman, as in note 26: page 134/5). 33. Patterson, 2017. 34. In its place of origin, the Bangwa Queen was probably a representation of a mother of twins and belonged to the lefem association (the gong society). She was called anyi in the local language, which means the same thing as ngwi ndem (or nyui ndem, “woman of god”). An anyi was an earth priestess and a soothsayer. Among the Western Bangwa, a “female chief” (mafwa) was initiated at the time that a new king was enthroned. The mafwa was a member of the gong society and had other “male” rights. In the local language, “lefem” means a holy grove or copse. This grove was part of the chief’s compound. The portrait figures were rank insignia for the gong society, as were double gongs. The ritual veneration of the ancestors was performed in the presence of relics. Portrait figures were displayed when the members of the society met in the holy grove. 35. Evans’ photographs were used to create a portfolio of about 400 of the exhibition’s 603 objects and at the time were distributed to historically black colleges in the South (Webb 2000). FIG. 27 (above left): Installation view of Masterpieces of African Art, October 21, 1954, through January 2, 1955, at the Brooklyn Museum. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 1954, image: PHO_E1954i034.jpg. FIG. 28 (above): Installation view of African Sculpture, May 20, 1970 through June 21, 1970, at the Brooklyn Museum. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 1970, image: PHO_E1970i011.jpg. FIG. 29 (below): Still from Les statues meurent aussi, 1953. Directed by Ghislain Cloquet, Chris Marker, and Alain Resnais. Produced by Présence Africaine and Tadié Cinéma. 117