African Masterpieces from the Musée de l’Homme presents a selection of masterpieces from the vast ethnographic collection of France’s preeminent ethnographic museum. After considerations of scholarship and connoisseurship, the final choices were based on subjective response to a work—its particular beauty and eloquence, its indefinable emotional power, or perhaps its fame—not on an attempt to represent a broad geographic range since inevitably the strengths in the collection were weighted in favor of former French territories and colonies. In their search through the museum’s files, the authors encountered a subversive love of beautiful objects, a search for aesthetically pleasing works by members of anthropological expeditions. The works fall into three groups—those earliest pieces collected by explorers, adventurers, and military men before about 1906; those brought back by scientific expeditions; and those composed of gifts to the museum from art collectors.

Exhibition catalogue by Susan Vogel and Francine N’Diaye, with introduction by Susan Vogel, essay, Africa, the Arts, and the Musée de l’Homme by Jean Guiart, and catalogue notes by Susan Vogel and Francine N’Diaye. Published and distributed by The Center for African Art and Harry N. Abrams, Inc., September 1984. 168 pp. Cloth: ISBN 0-8109-1825-0. LCCN: 84-71710.