Representing Woman: Sande Masquerades of the Mende of Sierra Leone by Ruth B. Phillips
4to. pp. 199. profusely illustrated in colour & b/w. hardcover. dw. [Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, [1995].
First Edition.
ISBN-10: 0930741447 / ISBN-13: 9780930741440
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For many years the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History has held a substantial group of masks from the Mende and related peoples of Sierra Leone and neighboring Liberia. Like most African art in Western collections, this material entered the museum with little or no field documentation. When Dr. Ruth Phillips submitted a provocative and insightful manuscript on the naming of Mende masks to the UCLA journal African Arts, I became intrigued with the possibility of exploring the topic further in the context of a more expansive publication. Dr. Phillips rose to the occasion. She took the opportunity to reevaluate recent scholarship on Sande masquerades and placed it more firmly in the context of late twentieth century thinking about African art and anthropology.