Mambila Collection

Introduction

The Mambila (Mambilla) are an agricultural people living on a plateau straddling the Cameroon/Nigerian border in Africa. In 1959, the first Mambila artifacts came to the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM). The entire collection consists of 293 artifacts including masks, wooden sculptures, terra cotta figure, personal and ritual objects, 166 black and white field photographs, and several interview tapes that are the basis for the MPM publication Mambilla by Nancy Beth A. Schwartz.

The Milwaukee Public Museum is proud to be the caretaker for the Mambila collection, the largest outside of West Africa.

The Mambila webpages were produced by New York University Museum Studies Graduate student and Milwaukee Public Museum Anthropology intern Kristen Olson Eckman under the direction of George Ulrich, Anthropology Curator Emeritus.

All black and white non-artifact Mambila photos used by permission of Evan Schneider.

Questions? Contact Dawn Scher Thomae.