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The Collector(s) / Donor(s) Robert Zigler spent the most of his career in international development working for the Agency for International Development (USAID). Today, he is retired but leads a very active life in Washington, DC, where he serves as a docent at the National Museum of African Art (Smithsonian Institution). During tours in Ghana (1979-81) and Burkina Faso (1983-85), Zigler collected examples of the art produced in each of the countries. Most of his acquisitions came from African art traders who periodically visited his homes in Kumasi (Ghana) and Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso). Soon after he retired in 1985 he began looking for good "homes" for his collection. Zigler is a firm believer that art can and should be used as vehicle for teaching people about other cultures. Indeed, he has distributed his collection among eighteen institutions of higher education! In 1990, Michigan State University Museum was fortunate to receive 60 of the objects he collected in Burkina Faso and Ghana. Collector(s) / Donor(s) Statement The Object(s) The Bwa who live in western Burkina Faso are believed to have borrowed a number of their masking traditions from their neigbors to the east, the Nuna. Plank masks, called nwantantay in the Bwa villages of Boni and Dossi, gernally perform at the end of the dry season, from early March to early May. They can appear in a number of contexts: at funerals, at initiation ceremonies and at annnual purification rites. Christopher Roy (1987: 276) informs us that such masks may represent flying spirits and are associated with the water. He notes that plank masks do not represent anything associated with the material world, but instead embody supernatural forces. They emody the spirits of the wilderness which intervene with the forces of nature to insure the health and well being of the Bwa families that use them. The black and white geometric patterning, one of key characteristics of nwantantay, is believed to carry symbolic meaning associated with religious laws that vary from village to village. The down-turned hook that is positioned above the circular face, has been interpreted as representing a nose, the crescent at the top os the moon, and the juxtapositioning of black and white forms is said to represent a series of binary oppositions--good and evil, wise and stupid, male and female, dark and light. Further Information Books and Articles Christopher D. Roy. Art of the Upper Volta Rivers. Meudon: Alain et Francoise Chaffin, 1987. Christopher D. Roy. "The Spread of Mask Styles in the Black Volta Basin," African Arts 20 (4) 1987: 40-47, 89-90. Christoper D. Roy. "Nature, Spirits, and Art in Burkina Faso," Art and Life in Africa: Recontextualizing African Art in the Cycle of Life. CD ROM conceived and developed by L. Lee McIntyre and Christopher D. Roy. The University of Iowa Art and Life in Africa Project, 1998. Norman Skougstad. Traditional Sculpture from Upper Volta. New York: The African-American Institute, 1978. John Wills. "Voltaic Peoples." I Am Not Myself: The Art of African Masquerade, ed. by H. Cole, pp. 34-39. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History (UCLA), 1985. Internet Resourcesnone
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