A central focus of the seminar that gave rise of this and the other essays presented in this issue of the Record was The Art Museum's decision to reinstall its African gallery. Participants in the seminar were asked to consider ways in which specific objects might be integrated into the planned reinstallation. Among these objects was an earlty twentieth-century carved headdress from the Cross River region of southeastern Nigeria (fig. I). In developping a workable plan for the installaion of the headdress, several concerns had to The Art Musuem : this institution was established primarly for the purpose of exhibiting Western art and accordingly favors Western approaches to the display of objects in its collections. Another consideration was th eissue of information : what data regarding the piece could we provide for viewers, whether in the form of a label or a handout. This second porblem proved particularly thorny, for relatively little has been written about works of this kind, and what sources do exist often contradict one another outright. This essay offers an overview of the concerns outlined above and proposes a set of tentative answers to the important questions they raise.