This is the catalogue that describes the collection of Afro-Brazilian religious art that is housed at the Fundação Cultural do Estado da Bahia. The text, written from an anthropological perspective, is by the museologist Raul Lody, who was also the organizer of the project. The collection includes the following items: musical instruments (kettledrums, triangles, tambourines); garments (skirt-aprons, hats, caps, capes); ritual jewelry (bracelets, bangles, ankle pendants, bead necklaces, crowns); “edans” (ritual objects used by the Ogboni initiation society); masks used by the Gueledé initiation society; ceramics; furniture (bench-seats); a set of ritual objects used by the Ogún orishá (divinities of Afro-Brazilian religions); “eruquerês” (ritual duster made of feathers); helmets made of Flanders sheet metal; ritual weapons (ceremonial swords, lances, daggers); decorative plumes; dolls; and printed texts (with prayers and words to sacred songs). There are a total of 179 objects, documented in 195 photographs.   

The anthropologist and museologist Raul Lody has spent over thirty years researching Brazilian religions and their African roots. He has overseen the cataloguing of collections of relevant religious items that are held in museums in several Brazilian states. He has written a total of almost five hundred monographs, catalogues, and books. Lody notes the value of the Fundação Cultural do Estado da Bahia’s trove, and explains that it was not assembled via the usual process of acquisitions or systematic collections carried out by anthropologists, ethnologists, and other scholars. Instead, it came about as a result of the (unprecedented) behavior of the Bahia police force, which was tasked with seizing these items from candomblé “terreiros” in the city of Salvador during a period of systematic repression of non-Christian sects. These Afro-Brazilian artifacts were “detained” for a long time in police precincts and command headquarters until eventually, following radical changes in the culture of the police force, they were handed over to cultural institutions and/or places of higher learning. 

Raul Lody (b. 1952) published a number of studies on this subject, including Vinte e um bastões cerimoniais [21 ceremonial scepters] (Rio de Janeiro: Museu Nacional, 1990); “Dezoito esculturas antropomorfas de orixás”[see doc. no. 1110529]; and others that were more focused on the theme such as “Yorubá: um estudo etno-tecnológico de 50 peças da coleção arte africana do Museu Nacional de Belas-Artes” [doc. no. 1110532]; and “Coleção Arthur Ramos” [doc. no. 1110525].

Other published articles and studies on this subject by noted specialists that have already been filed in the ICAA digital archive include: Catálogo ilustrado do Museu Folclórico, by Oneyda Alvarenga [doc. no. 1110523]; Cosmologias e altares, by Maria Lúcia Montes [doc. no. 1110528]; Cem anos de arte afro-brasileira, by Marta Heloísa Salum [doc. no. 1110524]; Para nunca esquecer. Negras memórias. Memórias de negros,published by the Museu Histórico Nacional [doc. no. 1110530]; and Catálogo do Museu Afro Brasileiro, by Jocélio Teles dos Santos [doc. no. 1110521]. (4)