Cleveland Museum of Art

Model Canoe and Paddles

Date

1900s

Medium

wood

Culture

Africa, East Africa, probably Uganda, unknown maker

Department

African Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Made of plain wood, this is a model of a canoe with a prow, seats, and five paddles. Composed of multiple panels sewn together with fibers, it was described in historical museum documents as a "war canoe." Similar examples from around the same period are found in American and European museums, where they had been collected in eastern, central, and western Africa as anthropological artifacts rather than as artworks. While the archives have little information about this object, it appears similar to Ugandan sewn plank canoes and to a model example collected in Uganda between 1890 and 1910 now at the British Museum. The small scale and a 1929 description of this object as "modern" suggest it was made for tourists.

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.