Elaine and Thurman Gillespy, Jr. Gallery

This gallery once housed African tribal objects that were part of a larger collection donated to the Museum in the 1980s. In their original communities, they played vital roles in ceremonies for celebration, initiation, preparation for war, and harvest. The collection arrived during a period of rapid Museum growth and was considered one of its most exciting and exotic groupings. The sculptures emphasized the human figure and its mythic functions, created by artists who worked within long-standing traditions where altering established forms was seen as an error and where power and magic were believed to bring the pieces to life.