The Musée du Quai Branly is currently holding an art exhibition in Paris called, "The Art of Hair: Frivolities and Trophies." The new show celebrates how hair has taken on many meanings in cultures across the globe and throughout time—as a fashion statement, spoil of war, marker of sexuality, valued keepsake, and ultimately art.
There are 280 objects on display in the exhibition according to a review in The New York Times blog "Arts Beat," and the mediums range from 20th century paintings to sculptures and relics from antiquity.
As the museum explains on its website about the exhibition:
Addressing the idea that individuals and social groups display personality through hairstyle, presented first in terms of frivolity: competing blonds, brunettes or redheads, straight or frizzy as seen in a wide range of classical paintings, sculptures and author photographs...the exhibition moves towards the idea of a human material to be shaped and sculpted, a medium both for knowledge and the relativity of beauty but also an object of loss, a symbol of time passing, illness and death.
The exhibition will be on display until July 14, 2013.
A museum visitor takes in the shrunken human heads or "tsantsas" that were used as ritual objects by certain South American tribes.
Source: Musée du Quai Branly
A 19th century bust of an African woman by Charles Cordier, who devoted his career as a sculptor to showcasing the diversity of human physiognomy.
Source: The New York Times
Here is a figurine from a Turkish shadow puppet theater show. The hair of the four men is being used as reins as they pull a figure in a carriage.
Source: Musée du Quai Branly
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