INTERACTIVE Click through the exhibit

'Masks: Faces of Culture'

Chicago museum looks behind the masks

April 3, 2000
Web posted at: 11:17 a.m. EST (1517 GMT)

(CNN) -- Masks have been used for eons to ward off evil, intimidate enemies, create new identities and enhance religious worship. An exhibit at The Field Museum of Chicago shows just how pervasive the tradition is across cultures and time.

"Masks: Faces of Culture" displays 139 masks and costumes, dating from the Chalcolithic period (5,000-3000 B.C.) to the present day. Artifacts can be traced to 50 countries on six continents.

Two curators with the Saint Louis Art Museum, Cara McCarty and John W. Nunley, collected the pieces over a six-year period. Their scavenger hunt took them from the most remote to the most mundane places, including the Lascaux caves in southwest France, Caribbean carnivals, stilt masquerades in Mali, rites-of-passage ceremonies in Bulgaria, U.S. sporting events and Broadway.

Exhibit coordinator David Bishop highlights a 230-year-old shaman's costume and mask from Siberia as "one of the most unique, bizarre and alien and beautiful" pieces on display.

The tunic and leggings are made of reindeerskin, the mask of copper. The outfit is adorned by "power objects," such as male and female mannequins, meant to help the shaman negotiate with evil forces of the spirit world.

"The shaman encapsulates the whole theme of transformation," he says. "Any time a person puts on a mask, he or she transforms his or her identity -- if only temporarily -- and is able to become something else and bring something back from that journey or effect some kind of a change."

A police officer's bullet-resistant mask from the United States provides a more modern example of the physical and psychological properties associated with masks. Not only does it give the wearer protection, but the design -- which conceals all the but the eyes -- is meant to frighten and unnerve a suspect.

"The need for masks seems to be universal, around the globe and throughout time," Bishop says. "It's not a dead thing."

Exhibition roundup: March/April
March 6, 2000

The Field Museum, Chicago

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