York's Shona Gallery
The
Blog
Stories of the artists and peoples behind the work: the sculptors, tribes, and traditions that have shaped our collection.
The Bamileke Tribe
The Bamileke are a cluster of related chiefdoms in the Western Highlands of Cameroon, a region of fertile volcanic plateaus known as the Grassfields. Each chiefdom is ruled by a...
The Baule Tribe
The Baule are an Akan people of central Côte d'Ivoire, descended from a group that migrated west from the Ashanti kingdom of present-day Ghana in the mid-18th century. Their founder,...
The Masaai Tribe
The Maasai are a Nilotic ethnic group inhabiting the semi-arid savannah of southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. Distinguished by their distinctive red shukas, elaborate beadwork, and warrior traditio...
The Benin Kingdom
The Kingdom of Benin, centred on Benin City in present-day Nigeria, was one of the most sophisticated polities in pre-colonial Africa. At its height from the 13th to the 17th...