Usually museums have to make a cast when they discover companion pieces like this, but in this case the owner was willing to give it to us. For instance, we have the head of a nobleman from the 25th Dynasty. The Brooklyn Museum has the body, so we traded casts to make complete figures. One of the Field Museum's most unusual acquisitions involved the skins of the Tsavo lions, two beasts who killed 135 Uganda Railway workers in 1898 at a bridge-construction site at the Tsavo River. British army Lt. Col. John Patterson, a railroad engineer, stalked the lions for nine months before killing them.
Some acquisitions arrive in museums after a lengthy courtship of collectors.
Ramon Price, chief curator at the DuSable Museum of African American Culture, has spent countless hours building relationships with collectors and artists, an important task because 90 percent of the museum's collection consists of gifts. The women are descendants of African slaves who integrated Catholicism into their Yoruba beliefs. Price finally asked the reclusive women last year for permission to commission a red-lined stole used in the ceremony, and they agreed. We were anxious to have one of those outfits so we could explain how they are residuals of African survivals in the New World. Other large acquisitions require inventive business dealings.