The Ife National Museum holds the most important collection of early Yoruba art in existence: a group of bronze and terracotta heads, figures, and ceremonial objects that represent a completely distinct and accomplished sculptural tradition. The bronzes — cast using the lost-wax method at a time when European bronze-casting was far less sophisticated — show faces of extraordinary naturalism, with fine parallel scarification lines and an attention to individual character that is unique in African art of the period.
The museum is compact. There are perhaps two dozen major pieces in the main gallery, but what it lacks in quantity it more than makes up in quality. The crowned head of a Yoruba ruler, with its beaded crown and precisely rendered features, is the single object most worth seeing. The terracotta pieces, slightly older and more stylised, show the full range of production: figures, heads, elephant representations, and abstract ritual objects. Allow at least ninety minutes; the collection rewards close attention.