Liverpool-Museum at African Antiques

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Liverpool World Museum

World Museum Liverpool
William Brown Street
Liverpool
L3 8EN
England

Telephone +44 151 478 4393

See also African Travel for other cities related on African art

World Cultures Gallery

Kongo figure, Central Africa, 19th century

Opening on 29 April 2005, the World Cultures Gallery will take you on a journey around the globe. Drawing on our huge ethnographic collections, the gallery will introduce you to the peoples of the world. Their traditions, beliefs and religions will be explained through the objects and artefacts they created.

The displays will explore the exchange of ideas and objects between the various cultures and Europe. How this exchange influenced all the societies involved will be a major theme of the gallery. Historical and contemporary voices will help explain the cultural background and stories behind the objects.

The gallery will reflect the museum's world-class collections. Liverpool's central role in international trade, exploration and colonialism brought a wealth of objects to the city. Many of the objects in the collections will be on display for the first time.

Each part of the gallery will focus on a different part of the world and the peoples who live there.

The four main areas represented are:

Africa, with a particularly strong selection of West and Central African items
the Americas, with important collections from the Arctic, Northwest Coast of North America, Mesoamerica, and the Amazon
Oceania, with much material from New Guinea, Fiji, the Solomon Islands and New Zealand
Asia, one of the largest and strongest collections in the UK, including material from China, Japan, Tibet, the Indian sub-continent, and South East Asia

Nkisi nkondi 'power figure' (Mangaaka)

Kongo, Mayombe, Democratic Republic of the Congo

About 1900

Donor: O Sonnerburg
Accession no.: 29.5.00.21

This figure - called Mangaaka - was an 'Nkisi' power figure of the violent 'nkondi' type. Mangaaka was feared and respected like a powerful chief. It could be used to perform chiefly functions, like opening and closing trade routes and punishing thieves. The figure would have contained spiritual forces collected from the grave of a dead person who was feared and respected in his lifetime. It was made before 1900 by a Kongo carver in central Africa. Kongo 'baganga' (the ritual specialists and healers who make and use these power figures) used 'minkisi' (plural of 'nkisi') like this one to protect people against witchcraft, disease and lawbreakers, and to help keep the peace.

Colonial officials removed it by force because it obstructed European trade.