Masks and Puppets from Mali

Mary Jo Arnoldi

«Seductive girls, mothers with their sons, fishermen, farmers and other people, young and old, now have a place in the museum where they move among animals of the water or of the forest, big birds landed here and other entities who are already spirits of the world to which all belong. They are the masks and puppets from Mali donated by Francisco Capelo to the Museu Nacional de Etnologia. They were already seen in the exhibition that celebrated this donation, Sogobò. Masks and puppets from Mali (2004). The story of how the donator met, acquired and came to offer them, he himself tells in his text The magic of animals. It is necessary to add that in the same day of the opening of the exhibition it was after all 50 and not 40, has he wrote, the number of objects he offered.» In Creatures Close To Us (page 5).

Coedition with the National Museum of Ethnology.