Painting
date: label: Collection Date
content: 2007
name: label: Collector
content: Jake Homiak
label: Donor Name
content: Jake Homiak
notes: label: Notes
content: Sky painting with red yellow and green rainbow and sun. Rainbow intersected by thirteen white doves. Airplane beneath. At bottom an outline of island of Jamaica in red yellow and green flying Jamaican and Ethiopian flags. Images of Ras Mortimo Planno and Haile Selassie standing on a cloud.
label: Notes
content: Donor notes: Title: "The King's Visit". Commissioned and purchased for the "Discovering Rastafari" exhibit 2007. Artist: Ras Everton Mitchener.
label: Notes
content: "The King's Visit". Painting by Rastafari artist Ras Everton Mitchener, Jamaica 2007. Oil on stretched canvas, approximately 2 x 3 feet. Painting is done in the form of a Rastafari cosmology that represents the arrival and visit of Ethipian Emperor Haile Selassie I to Jamaica in April 21-24, 1966. Against a blue cloud backdrop the artist draws upon figures such as clouds, rainbows, an airplane, the figure of Emperor Haile Selassie and Mortimo Planno and the cartography of Jamaica in red-gold-and-green to represent a styled human face. The outline of Jamaica forms the mouth, the figures of Haile Selassie and Planno standing on a cloud form the nose, and two clouds surmounted by rainbows form the eyebrows and crown of the head, with the plane occupying the place of 'third eye' or pineal gland punctuated by a small red-gold-green circle. Between the two sides of the rainbow appear 13 doves, a number that the Rastafari identify with the person of Emperor Selassie I and which, in Rasta oral lore, are said to have burst through the clouds prior to the arrival of his airplane in 1966. In the upper left corner of the painting is a larger red-gold-green circle representing the 13th planet Pluto - a planet that was discovered in the birth year of the Emperor. Painting was commissioned and purchased from the artist in Kingston, Jamaica in 2007 by Jake Homiak. Forms part of the permanent Rastafari collection that was assembled in the run-up to the launch of the “Discovering Rastafari” exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian, (2007-2011)."
label: Record Last Modified
content: 15 Feb 2023
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Kingston, Jamaica, Caribbean
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Jamaican
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 2073991
label: USNM Number
content: E434072-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Painting
physicalDescription: label: Length
content: 100 cm
label: Width
content: 73.5 cm
label: Height
content: 3 cm