When a dozen weather-worn wood sculptures from southeastern Nigeria debuted in a Paris gallery in 1974, they were radically different from any African art that had been exhibited in the West. After that brief assembly, the carved Mbembe figures mostly retreated from public view to private collections, excepting one on proud view in the Louvre. "Warriors and Mothers: Epic Mbembe Art" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art now reunites those works from the 17th to 19th centuries for the first time since the 1974 Paris exhibition.

The sculptures — originally part of massive drums used to communicate between Mbembe communities — remain as enigmatic as they were in 1972 when gallery owner and art dealer Hélène Kamer acquired them from a Malian dealer named O. Traoré.