Images from a visit to the MAA in Cambridge. Very interesting museum with the upper galleries still exuding the charm and atmosphere of the old dark wooden cabinets and slightly wonky displays whilst downstairs it is all fresh and new with metal duck egg blue cabinets. If the whole place is ‘upgraded’ then a sense of the history of the collection and a lot of atmosphere will be lost in the process. At the same time one can see that a liking for Edwardian display cases may be a minority interest and that they are rather dark and dusty, possibly not up to current curatorial and conservation standards. A difficult one.

I was very taken with the Nigerian wooden masks which are very wonderful and the superb ‘Janus’ mask. An attendant got me a chair when she saw I was going to try to draw it. A great Y7 project ready to go. The masks were accompanied by some fantastic black and white photographs of a band a dancers in the Nigerian village in 1912 actually wearing the masks which really made them come alive.

>Wooden frame with antelope skin drawn across it. The black face faces forwards and represents Father Heaven and the hello face represents Mother Earth. From the Cross River area of Nigeria and collected in 1917.
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Peruvian pots

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A thumb piano from Kenya.

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Drawings in pen and pencil in the notebook.