Playful Performers.

Playful Performers April 9-December 12, 2004 Smithsonian/National Museum of African Art 

Playful Performers, in the main temporary space at the National Museum of African Art, was an exhibition about children's masquerade in sub-Saharan Africa. It was introduced by a lengthy wall text explaining its purpose. This text was faced on the opposite wall by a montage of photographs of children at play, for the most part using toys they made themselves (a talent for which African children are rightly famous). However, within the exhibition no further mention of toys was made. As I was aware of plans for this show from the beginning, I know that it was originally intended to include both children's masks and toys: thus, it was originally an exhibition of much greater scope than its final form. It would also have been more about play than the current exhibition, and would have presented a more complete picture of African children's lives. Given the final scope of the exhibition, this montage might have been replaced with photos of children's masquerades. It was clearly stated at the outset that this show is about children and primarily for children.

This exhibition was not about precious or spectacular objects, although it included a few stunning sculptures from the collection of the museum and some remarkable masks made for Carnival in Guinee Bissau from the Wolfe collection. Nor was it particularly about masks per se. Rather, it presented and discussed children's masquerade in Africa, a subject little explored but much witnessed by scholars studying African cultures.

There is a problem inherent in an exhibition about children's masquerade in Africa: These children probably perform masquerades as often as adults do; they certainly dance as often as they can. However, their "masks" are very often made of ephemeral or fugitive materials (viz: the wall photograph in the first gallery of a boy wearing a mask improvised from a box for Omo, a powdered detergent, and a piece of string or elastic). As a result, their masks are impermanent in many cases. In addition to this, the term "mask" does not necessarily imply a covering for the face. Indeed, it is occasionally used interchangeably with the term "masquerade," and sometimes with the term "performance." I am reminded of a visit to my house in northern Cote d'Ivoire by a couple of boys in 1969. The boys claimed to have a "mask" they would perform for me. The "mask" consisted of a palm-fiber skirt, donned by one of the boys, and a large, empty tomato paste can, played as a drum by the other boy while the boy in the skirt danced. Their understanding of the term "mask" was clearly different than mine was. As I have published elsewhere in a discussion of Akan portraiture (1988, Art Journal 47[2]:152), the effective study of Africans and their material culture sometimes requires us to rethink our categories.

Playful Performers, unlike most museum exhibitions of art from sub-Saharan Africa, was not a collection of sculpted masterpieces, though it included a couple of impressive pieces from the museum's permanent collection, a number of very interesting and seldom-seen children's masks, and several complete masquerade costumes. In fact, there were remarkably few objects in this exhibition: the total was twenty-two, including both masks and costumes. There was much open space in the galleries, presumably to allow visitors to dance themselves. During one of my visits, three young visitors were, in fact, dancing in the gallery. Unfortunately, they caught sight of me and stopped.

Two tables were included in the gallery, behind partial walls. Here, provided with colored pencils, paper, and examples of drawings by other visitors (which, I am informed, were changed daily and posted on the exhibition's web site www.nmafa.si.edu/exhibits/play ful/introindex.html), visitors were encouraged to draw masks (and costumes?) they saw in the galleries, to make masks and perform masquerades themselves. This added an interesting interactive element to the presentation. During all three of my visits to the show, both children and their adult companions were very busy at these tables, commenting on their work and the drawings of others that were posted above the tables.

The galleries were lit rather dimly, with spots cast on the floor here and there. These spots were in the shape of several of the wall photographs. Walls were painted in earth tones, with silhouettes in darker tones of masked dancers in performance. Unfortunately, I fear this was lost on most visitors who attend the show without docents to point this out to them.

I was at first bothered by the presence of three tourist masks in the big central gallery (masks that copy traditional forms), mounted on posts at the correct height for a pre-adolescent child. Visitors to the exhibition were encouraged to put their faces up to these masks, to give them some idea of what a masquerader sees when wearing a mask over his face. Upon reflection, however, it occurred to me that this was a perfectly logical de-fetishization of masks, especially appropriate to this particular show.

One has trouble imagining how children (or adults, for that matter) could visit this exhibition and understand its didactic intent without careful assistance. It relied heavily on wall texts and labels, and it would be interesting to know how many visitors came away from the galleries with the knowledge of children's masquerade that the curatorial staff of the museum intended for it to impart. During my three visits, children accompanied by adults seemed to have a much clearer idea of what the show was all about than those who were unaccompanied in the galleries.

The exhibition included two video screens that presented continuous loops of masquerade performances: one of a Chimbi masquerade performed by children in northeastern C6te d'Ivoire and a second, on a large screen at the entrance to the large, central gallery, showing an Okpella masquerade that includes masked children and refers in its symbols to mothers and children. The videos, accompanied by sound, enlivened the galleries significantly. During my second visit, the large screen in the main gallery was blank and the gallery was silent. I noticed that people in the galleries on this day were much less animated than during my other two visits to the show.

The wall photos in the show were numerous, large in format, and uniformly very fine. The inclusion of several complete masquerade costumes on mannequins in the galleries, coupled with video screenings of two of these costumes in performance, was very effective. The exhibition also included a number of drawings and small models of masqueraders made by children, which generated a significant amount of interest from visitors. These drawings and models were juxtaposed with photographs of adult masquerade performances and examples of the masks themselves.

The introductory comments included reference to the web component of the exhibition. The effectiveness of this will be very difficult if not impossible to measure. Moreover, there is no guarantee that all the families and groups that visited the show had access to and familiarity with the World Wide Web; for those who did not, the show was entertaining, but much of its impact was, I fear, lost. The web component acted as a substitute catalogue and included discussion of several of the themes presented in the exhibition. It also included photographs from the exhibition. The text was abstracted from a book by David Binkley and Simon Ottenberg on children's masquerade, Africa: Playful Performers: African Children's Masquerades (Rutgers University Press, forthcoming).

David Binkley and his colleagues in the curatorial and education departments at the National Museum of African Art are to be congratulated for their efforts in developing and presenting Playful Performers. They have shown that it is possible to create a successful show about children, primarily for children, that appeals to children in a very direct way. Luckily for their adult companions, it also presented a new picture of African children and their lives that is interesting and informative for persons of any age.