A French auction house ignored both a tribe’s request and the U.S. Embassy’s plea to delay an auction of sacred Native American masks and sold them Monday for $1.6 million.
At the Drouot auction house in France, Native American objects sold quickly on Monday, including the sacred Hopi mask "Crow Mother" that was bought at nearly twice its expected value at $171,000.
Christian Hartmann / Reuters
The Los Angeles-based Annenberg Foundation announced Wednesday it bought 24 of the Native American objects sold at the auction Monday for a total of $530,000. The foundation said in a statement that it planned to return 21 masks to the Hopi Nation in Arizona, and three hood masks to the San Carlos Apache.
The Hopi believe the masks are imbued with the spirits of the dead and still use them in religious ceremonies, but do not display the masks to the public and consider it sacrilegious for any images of the objects to be photographed.
The masks date back to the mid-1800s and are made from wood, leather, and horse hair, and are painted bright red, blue, yellow, and orange.
Note the decorative corncobs casually placed around the "Crow Mother" mask and the Native American objects in the background at the Drouot auction.
Christian Hartmann / Reuters
Christian Hartmann / Reuters
