Introduction
During the First Liberian Civil War (1989-1997), Cuttington University College’s Suakoko campus suffered catastrophic looting and damage. This included roughly 3,000 objects and accompanying documentation housed in the college’s Africana Museum. Today, the main source of surviving information about the Africana collection is William Siegmann’s 1977 catalogue Rock of the Ancestors. Thanks to the catalogue, an American museum was able to identify an Africana object in their collection and initiated a return to Cuttington University in 2025. This website represents an effort to raise awareness of the looting and destruction that occurred at the Africana Museum in the hopes that more objects from Cuttington can be identified.
Unless noted otherwise, all photos on this website are used with the permission of Cuttington University and are taken from:
Siegmann, William, with Cynthia E. Schmidt. 1977. Rock of the Ancestors / Namôa k ni: Liberian art and Material Culture from the Collections of the Africana Museum, Cuttington University College, Suakoko, Liberia. Suakoko: Cuttington University College.
Exceptions are credited in the rights fields for the individual items.
Browse items in the collection following the link in the page header above.
If you have questions about the collection or if you would like to share information about the whereabouts of any of the missing items, please contact us via the link in the page headers throughout the site.
This site was created by the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, in collaboration with the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship. It is jointly administered by the Michael C. Carlos Museum and Cuttington University.