oil painting
- Museum number
- Painting.62
- Title
- Object: Museum of Mankind
- Description
-
Advertising poster by Michael Buhler largely abstract design featuring African items.
- Production date
- 1970s
- Dimensions
-
Height: 114 centimetres
-
Width: 76 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- One of a series of seven advertising posters displaying the range of the Museum’s collections produced for a campaign in the late 1970s . This poster advertised the Museum of Mankind, Burlington Gardens, then occupied by the Department of Ethnography (which returned to the main site in Bloomsbury in 2003). It features African sculpture with the dominant feature (bottom right) a 16th-century ivory mask from Benin. This type of mask was worn by the Oba, on the hip, during important ceremonies. The top of the mask is decorated with heads representing the Portuguese, symbolizing Benin’s alliance with and control over Europeans.```
A copy of the Poster (Catalogue No. 92) is held by the Central Library.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
The painting itself has always been in store.
- Acquisition notes
- The painting was commissioned in return for a fee as part of a series of seven used in a poster campaign in 1977-8. The campaign was handled by Saatchi & Saatchi (Fay Jenkins). By agreement the Museum retained the original.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- Painting.62