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Mask: Eagle
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
Across the Northwest Coast, native people engaged in renewal rites during the winter ceremonial season. This mask, with a beak that opens and head panels that move, may have been used during such celebrations. In 1998, Robert Joseph, a Northwest Coast chief, recalled that when he donned dance masks like this one as a youth, "all the world is somewhere else . . . I am the mask . . . the bird . . . the animal . . . the spirit. I transcend into the being of the mask."
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineMask: Eagle, 1800s. Native North America, Northwest Coast, British Columbia, Nuxalk (Bella Coola). Wood, pigment, restored eye inlays; overall: 35.6 x 45.8 x 24.2 cm (14 x 18 1/16 x 9 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Harold T. Clark Educational Extension Fund, 1956.547
