A Kroumein Passport mask, Ivory Coast, collected in the region Douekoué region, with an open mouth and a natural brownish patina. Incl. stand. Passport masks in Côte d’Ivoire represent a unique adaptation of traditional West African mask forms to the contexts of mobility, documentation, and international circulation. Unlike ceremonial masks used in ritual, initiation, or funerary contexts, passport masks are typically small-scale, portable sculptural faces that distill key aesthetic traits—such as geometric abstraction, symmetry, and stylized facial features—into a format suitable for travel or collection.^1 Artists from groups including the Baule, Guro, and Senufo carved these miniatures to emphasize recognizable cultural markers, often incorporating scarification patterns, elongated faces, or animal-inspired elements that recall ritual prototypes.^2 Although detached from their original ceremonial functions, these masks carry symbolic references to beauty, social status, or spiritual authority, effectively serving as condensed representations of cultural identity.^3 The emergence of passport masks illustrates the interaction between traditional aesthetic systems and the pressures of the global art market, highlighting how West African visual culture was adapted for portability and international appreciation while retaining stylistic continuity with ritual models.^4 Kroumein masks are often confused with Dan masks; however, they are in fact a subgroup of Dan masks. In the anthropological and ethnographic literature on West African masquerade traditions, the spelling "Koumein" is generally used when referring to the subgroup of Dan masks. The variant "Kroumein" is not standard in academic or collector terminology and likely reflects a phonetic or transcription error rather than a recognized cultural term. Dan masks are referred to as "ge" or "gle" by the Dan people themselves and embody spirit forces in masquerade performances among the Dan of Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire. The masks are central to Dan ritual life and aesthetics. Therefore, "Koumein" is the preferred term in scholarly usage for this subgroup of Dan mask types, and "Kroumein" should generally be avoided unless quoting a specific source that uses that spelling. Footnotes: 1. Vogel, Susan Mullin. African Aesthetics: The Baule and Guro Traditions. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum, 1988, 102–103. 2. Perani, Judith. African Art: Côte d’Ivoire. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1982, 118. 3. Sullivan, Lynne. Baule: African Art from the Ivory Coast. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990, 85. 4. Cole, Herbert M., and Chantal T. Cole. African Art and Leadership: Masks of Côte d’Ivoire. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996, 210. CAB30333