Disney gives African art to Smithsonian

WASHINGTON -- A major collection of African artwork, some dating to the 1400s, was donated Thursday to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art.\n"This is a collection that has been sought after by everyone in the museum world because it is so great," said Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence Small. "Finally, for reasons I wholeheartedly agree with, it came here."\nThe Walt Disney Co.'s outgoing chief executive, Michael Eisner, said over the years the company had fielded numerous requests for the collection. He said there were repeated calls from French President Jacques Chirac, who wanted specific pieces to be displayed in the Louvre Museum in Paris.\n"It became clear that this kind of collection was inappropriate in a warehouse," Eisner said, adding that it also became obvious that the Smithsonian, a museum for all Americans, was the best repository.\nWhile some pieces in the collection have remained in the warehouse, museum curator Bryna Freyer said Disney has been extremely generous in lending particular pieces to museums around the world, and the National Museum of African Art will continue to loan out pieces.\nThe museum will include a few of the pieces in exhibits in the next few months. After February 2007, it will maintain at least 60 pieces at all times, and the items displayed may change.\nMuseum curators said the donation will fill gaps in their current collection and help them to better demonstrate themes in African Art.\nSome of the objects have already been on display at the Smithsonian, including a 15th-century hunting horn from Sierra Leone and several ivory armlets made for Nigerian kings.\nOthers are more recent, such as a 20th-century headdress mask from the Calabar region of Nigeria. Made from wood covered with antelope skin, the mask depicts a woman whose long hair is curled like horns in a style once worn during girls' coming-out ceremonies.\nCurator Christine Mullen Kreamer said the museum will now have one of the nation's best collections of skinned masks from that region.\nThe collection was bought by Disney in 1984 from New York real estate developer Paul Tishman and his wife, Ruth, who began collecting African art in the early 1960s.\nBecause some of the pieces are so rare and African art prices have risen so much in recent years, the exact value of the collection has not been determined. Museum curators are not even familiar with many of the items.\n"I tend to consider a number of the pieces priceless," said Freyer, "but you can't put that on an insurance form."\nDisney declined to say how much the collection is insured.