Mask, ca. 1880

  • Yupik, Native American

Wood, plant fiber and feather

  • Overall: 25 × 30 × 2 1/2 inches (63.5 × 76.2 × 6.4 cm)

Founders Society Purchase, Stroh Brewery Foundation Fund

77.69

On View

  • Native American, Level 1, South

Department

Indigenous Americas

A Yupik Eskimo shaman (traditional healer and holy man) commissioned this mask ringed with miniature seal flippers and kayak paddles to represent his power to travel to the spirit world beneath the sea. The shaman sponsored masquerades during festivals in which the community thanked the spirits of the animal world for allowing themselves to be killed for food. Wood was scarce in the central Alaskan tundra lands inhabited by the Yupik. Artists fashioned masks from odd pieces of driftwood that floated downriver from the forested interior of Alaska.

(John A. Friede, New York, New York, USA)

1977-present, purchase by the Detroit Insitute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

Penney, David W. and George C. Longfish. Native American Art. Southport, CT, 1994, p. 242. Bulletin of the DIA 56, no. 5 (1978): 342 (ill.).

Yupik, Native American, Mask, ca. 1880, wood, plant fiber and feather. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, Stroh Brewery Foundation Fund, 77.69.