Aowin memorial head
CA0353 · Visual art · Aowin traditional area, Ghana; eighteenth century
Historical / contextual reference
Photograph of the specific selected museum object; identity checked by object ID and accession.
Credit: Akan artist / The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of Samuel and Gabrielle Lurie, in celebration of the Museum's 150th Anniversary, 2018
Rights: Public domain; Met Open Access
A terracotta head presents a composed face, marked temples and a carefully arranged coiffure. The Metropolitan Museum identifies it as an Akan memorial portrait from the Aowin area, made in the eighteenth century. Its account explains that such images could join earlier rulers and attendants in a sacred cemetery, where offerings sustained relationships with ancestors. The portrait therefore needs more than a detached description of shape. Its calm expression belongs to an idealised public memory, not necessarily to a moment caught from life. Selecting this particular head, accession 2018.925.1, gives future audiences an opportunity to consider how communities make the dead present and how clay can carry expectations about exemplary conduct.
Why preserve it: Curatorial interpretation: It expands portraiture beyond individual likeness to include collective remembrance and continuing relationships with ancestors.
Keep in mind: The maker's name and gender are not established. Do not convert a general history of women making memorial ceramics into a certain attribution for this object.