The Sainsbury African galleries at the British museum.

After being housed for nearly thirty years in the Museum of Mankind in Burlington Gardens, the African collection has returned to the British Museum. It is now displayed in purpose-built galleries, sponsored by the Sainsbury Trust and the Henry Moore Foundation, to the north of the striking Great Court scheme with its vast glass dome by Sir Norman Foster. (1) Offering 850 square meters of exhibition rooms dedicated to the African continent, the Sainsbury African Galleries are a major step in the phased creation of the new ethnography space that will culminate in the opening of the Study Centre, to house the reserve collection, possibly in 2005.

This permanent exhibition has been open to the public since March 2001. The move is an important one for the whole British Museum community. It not only recontextualizes African material by moving it from a self-contained ethnographic institution into one that features major collections from the classical world, it also changes the museum into something notably less Western focused and more global both in scope and vision. It involves, then, a major shift in the way the institution sees itself and its role.

There are obviously a hundred ways of structuring an exhibition on Africa. The space imposes its own demands: since it is possible to enter the galleries at three different points, any single, linear narrative is excluded, and every section has to work separately on its own terms. Moreover, every department of the British Museum, apart from Japanese Antiquities, already contains material that is in some sense "African." So the questions instantly arise: What is an African gallery, what should be put in it, and how should it be ordered?

Most visitors enter from the main staircase. At the top they encounter a group of brand-new fantasy coffins from Ghana (Fig. 2) and huge banners featuring the work of the Namibian artist John Muafangejo, which were made for the "Free Nelson Mandela" concert held at Wembley in 1988. These works, we hope, give the message that Africa is a place not simply where traditions are lost but where traditions are constantly invented and reinvented. As one descends into the exhibition, the first view is of the swelling, organic form of a ceramic vessel by Magdalene Odundo framed against the strong verticals and horizontals of a textile by Chant Avedissian (Fig. 5). To the right and left of this powerful dual image are the works of other artists: a massive welded-metal figure by Sokari Douglas Camp, an elegant ceramic column and a decorated drum by, respectively, Tunisian artists Khaled Ben Slimane and Nja Mahdaoui (Fig. 3), a pair of characteristically bold linocuts by John Muafangejo. Through this handful of striking works the exhibition immediately declares its intention. These are not familiar objects from the canon of African art. Some were created in parts of the continent which are still not thought of as Africa by some scholars; others were not created in Africa at all. All of them, however, question what we understand to be Africa and African art in the globalizing world of the twenty-first century.

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Rather than suggesting some sort of distillation of "African-ness" in the galleries, our aim was to highlight the continent's extraordinary diversity--cultural, geographical, ethnic, and artistic--and its immense impact on the rest of the world. The work of Magdalene Odundo (Fig. 4), born in Kenya but now living in Britain, provides more than a visual contrast to that of Chant Avedissian, an artist of Armenian ancestry but living in Egypt. Odundo's techniques--coiling and burnishing rather than wheel-turning and glazing--place her in the tradition of potting in subSaharan Africa, yet her sources of inspiration range from Cycladic figurines to the work of Arp, Gaudier-Brzeska, and Brancusi. Avedissian acknowledges that his applique technique was directly inspired by the khiyamiyat, the tentmakers of modern Cairo, but he draws inspiration for the design from the false doors of Pharaonic Old Kingdom tombs and features of the floors and walls of Cairo's late-medieval mosques. Not so recognizable, but running like a leitmotif through all his work, is the spirit of his mentor, the pioneering Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy.

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Like the other artists represented in the first section of the exhibition, Odundo and Avedissian could be described as "African," but at the same time their multiple identities may, on occasion, make such a label unnecessary or even restrictive. Perhaps most significantly, these artists all have names and faces which we know and associate with their work, and to this extent they act as standard bearers for all those others who are represented elsewhere in the exhibition, artists who are not anonymous but whose names and faces we may never know.

Once we had made the decision to begin the exhibition in the present rather than the distant (Olduvai Gorge) or not so distant (iconic pieces from the canon) past, we chose an ordering principle: to group the exhibits largely according to the materials of which they are made. This is less arbitrary than it might at first seem, as a whole philosophy often underlies each different material and technology, and this can be used as a means of shedding light on African history and social life. Benin brasscasting (Fig. 6) can be seen to be about the strength and durability of kingship, pottery about women's bodies, their powers, and so on. Thus, apparently simple technological distinctions offer a path to some of the complexities of the cultural and the social. But because a permanent exhibition also requires a focus different from that of a temporary display, and it was felt that such a body of material must lend itself to being constantly mined in different ways, broad themes such as trade/history, male/female, ancient/contemporary are built in to crosscut the different sections. In this way, conventional presumptions about Africa can be confronted and shown to be problematic.

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Nonetheless, it was never going to be easy to make these transitions between the exhibition's sections, which are, in any case, designed to be self-sufficient. It was always our intention to make this initial display as flexible as possible so that the integrity of the entire installation would not be compromised should we decide to remove one part of it and insert a temporary show at some time in the future. We are already giving thought to which new works may replace those in this first portion of the display in a few years' time. However, without overtly making the connection, we have tried where possible (and it wasn't always possible) to suggest subtle links between areas, so that these juxtapositions don't seem too jarringly irrational.

Progression from the Contemporary section is eased, on one side, by Sokari Douglas Camp's Big Masquerade with Boat and Household on His Head (Fig. 7), which points the way to the thought-provoking presentation of Kalabari masquerade prefacing a more general display of masks. As in the highly successful American Museum of Natural History's Kalabari show, (2) we are able to feature the very same hippo mask in an ethnographic installation, a contemporary artwork interpretation, and an actual multimedia performance. There are three different ideas, then, on where the "art" of African masquerade lies and how it should be experienced--in the carved wood, in the visual aesthetic, or in the multimedia act of performance. These questions prepare the visitor for the numerous examples of carved headpieces (some of them on public view for the first time) which follow and which must remain the staple of any ethnographical display of masquerade (Fig. 8). However, we have tried to leaven this more traditional presentation by having as many ex-case objects as possible (Fig. 9) and by including objects such as the Chewa basketry antelope to question our conventional understanding of what a "mask" might be.

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The significance of textiles in masquerade is receiving increasing attention from scholars. Just as the masquerade costume conceals the identity of the dancer and reveals another world to the onlookers, so the visitor passing out of the masquerade and into the textile section of the exhibition may consider a similar role performed by certain types of African dress. Of course, African textiles are used for a variety of purposes in addition to costume, and are created in numerous ways other than weaving. However, although these different uses and techniques, including those for factory-made cloth, are well represented in the display, our concern was not so much with the means of production or the utilitarian function of cloth, but more with its social and historical significance.

Textiles often represent important historical documents which may detail specific events or suggest more momentous phenomena which long predate their own production, such as the movements of peoples and patterns of trade. One of our major goals in this exhibition was to allow the objects to speak as eloquently as possible about African history and the interaction of the continent with the rest of the world.

Anyone who might contemplate eliding northern Africa from a future study of African arts and cultures, as has happened all too frequently in the past, should consider the long and complex history of the textiles created today on small draw-looms by Manjak and Papel weavers of Guinea-Bissau and adjacent countries. The designs, essentially of Berber origin and inspiration, flourished on the Iberian peninsula during the Hispano-Mauresque civilization (ca. 10th-15th century A.D.), where they were produced on increasingly large and sophisticated draw-looms. The designs sailed with the Portuguese, initially to the Cape Verde Islands, where they were learned by enslaved weavers, and in due course to the African mainland. There they satisfied an existing penchant for designs of north African inspiration, which had been fostered by the trans-Saharan textile trade for many centuries before the arrival of the Europeans. The circle had taken almost a thousand years to complete, though the story is not yet over. The small draw-looms which are used in Tunisia and Guinea-Bissau (illustrated in the exhibition through a video and fieldwork photographs taken by staff of the Ethnography Department) share ancestry with the great looms of the Hispano-Mauresque civilization. The face of the revolutionary leader Amilcar Cabral, staring out from one of the Papel textiles on display (Fig. 10), therefore evokes a great deal more beyond the important moment in the recent history of one small west African state which it was ostensibly designed to commemorate.

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A magnificent tablet-woven cloth from the other side of the African continent tells a different story, although, as with the Papel textile just described, it too commemorates a particular historical event. This textile was probably woven in mid-eighteenth-century Ethiopia and was designed to hang in a church as the central section of a triptych (Fig. 11). It depicts in extraordinary detail the lying-in-state of King Bakaffa, who died in 1730, and a funerary procession which includes his wife, Queen Mentuab, his seven-year-old son Iyasu, as well as angels and ecclesiastical and military figures. The cloth is made of imported Chinese silk, and the matchlocks carried by the royal guard are of Indian make, thus illustrating the long-standing trade and cultural exchange between eastern Africa and the Orient.

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Other themes examined in the textile section include the significance of patterning on African cloth, in particular those designs intended to protect the wearer from the Evil Eye; cloth and costume associated with life-cycle ceremonies such as initiation, marriage, and funerals; and finally textiles which communicate details of the owner's rank, status, beliefs, and other affiliations. In this last section we have displayed a tunic, muraqqa'a, from the early period of the Mahdist state in late-nineteenth-century Sudan. Such tunics were deliberately patched and made ragged to indicate their wearers' status as religious mendicants. Some visitors have remarked upon the contrast between this apparently humble and decrepit garment in close proximity to the wonderful brasscastings from Benin. However, it is often the object which is the least appealing to the Western eye which is of most interest to the ethnographer.

Close to the muraqqa'a we have displayed a tailored and colorful garment, jibba, of a type relatively common in museum collections in Britain. The former was once thought to have been the dress of the rank and file, the latter of an officer in the Mahdist armies. These two garments, however, actually tell a much subtler story which relates to the politics of costume and the evolution of the Mahdist state from a movement of religious zeal under the Mahdi to an increasingly militaristic autocracy under his successor, the Khalifa. The jibba, while retaining some characteristics of the earlier garment, such as stylized patches, in fact evolved from its ragged model over the fifteen-year period which witnessed the rise and fall of the Mahdist state.

The theme of personal adornment, a subject closely associated with textiles, is addressed by displaying these objects directly in front of the main textile case. The garments with which many of these pieces of jewelry (Fig. 12) and other accessories would be worn are visible through the display, thus helping to put both into context, a process further assisted by employing similar thematic divisions to the textile cases. Rather than selecting a haphazard collection of individual artifacts from all over Africa, we took the opportunity to highlight, within the limited space available, case studies such as the development of Zulu earplug designs in the context of other items of personal adornment such as beadwork and headdresses (Fig. 13).

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The sublime court art of Benin inevitably provides the focus for the brasscasting section of the galleries, in particular a new arrangement of the famous plaques (Fig. 14) which suggests, in stylized form, their original role in adorning the pillars of the Oba's (king's) palace in Benin City. This presentation is an immense improvement over the old one, where plaques were stuck to the wall like tiles halfway up the main staircase. Beyond that fact, this new arrangement reflects research which suggests not only that matching pairs of similar design were used but also that a kind of lintel of horizontal plaques ran along the top of the pillars, including images of animals such as the leopard, which was closely associated with the Oba.

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Animals are extremely significant in Benin art (Fig. 15), and we have devoted an entire case to this subject. Another case, containing brass heads cast for the altars of dead Obas and Queen Mothers, illustrates the importance of the head and the hand in Benin life and thought. In addition to the material from Benin, works from earlier brasscasting traditions in southern Nigeria are featured, including ninth-century pieces from Igbo Ukwu and, of course, from the Yoruba kingdom of Ife. The crowned head of an Ife ruler takes pride of place, its extraordinarily fine modeling and naturalism once persuading many to conclude that it must have been a product of classical Greece rather than of independent African inspiration.

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Although the section is devoted to the theme of brasscasting, we felt it essential to show some of the magnificent ivory pieces associated with Benin. In doing so, however, we drew the distinction between those made for Portuguese visitors and those which incorporated the royal metal, brass, and were very much for court use alone (Fig. 16).

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Let us return for a moment to the central (Contemporary) section, as all visitors must do to see the other half of the exhibition. John Muafangejo's linocuts (Fig. 17) have persuasive associations with the section dealing with woodcarving, in particular with the adjacent carved Igbo door, which you feel could almost be inked up and used as a woodcut block. Another link is established between Sokari Douglas Camp's sculpture and the duein fubara funerary screen in the woodcarving section, both of which display the same Bekinarusibi masquerade.

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It is always a calculated risk to place artifacts on open display, but doing so undoubtedly infuses the "objects of power" in this section, including the trio of nkisi figures, bristling with nails, with a remarkable immediacy and vitality (Fig. 18). Equally, the opportunity to examine in detail some of the great masterpieces of African woodcarving in the cased display opposite affords another more contemplative but no less pleasurable experience. The image, ndop, of king Shyaam-a-Mbul Ngwoong is sublime (Fig. 19), not simply because of the genius of the artist who carved it, but because it seems to transcend the time and place of its own creation and to encourage us to look with new eyes at some of the aspects of an African culture to which we have been blind. This king is considered the founding father of Kuba society; during his reign in the seventeenth century he introduced or encouraged many important elements of Kuba culture, including ironworking, textile production, and woodcarving. All these innovations, as well as his skill in diplomacy and military tactics, are recorded in different elements and details of the sculpture and help to remind us not only of the reality and complexity of African history but also of the particular significance of different aspects of African material culture. In many ways these were our own aims in curating these galleries.

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The symbols of power and prestige which conclude the woodcarving section--palace doors, royal stools, back rests, and a fine example of the kiti cha enzi, or "chair of power," from Zanzibar (Fig. 20)--provide a fitting introduction to the objects in the forged metalwork Section. In many ways the latter represent the source of that power and prestige: metal currency, agricultural tools, and, most significant of all, bladed weaponry. A further link to the preceding section is provided by a second Kuba ndop figure, the renowned blacksmith king Mbop Pelyeeng aNce, surrounded by the tools of his trade and the products of his forge.

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In 1890 the journalist and explorer H.M. Stanley put on an exhibition at the Victoria galleries in London which consisted largely of African weaponry. His intention was not, of course, to illuminate the significance of these objects within the societies which used them, nor to draw attention to the artistry of their manufacture, but mainly to suggest the primitive savagery from which the Dark Continent was being delivered-- and the opportunities for trade it represented. During the colonial period the production and use of African weaponry were suppressed, and although the significance of these objects began to reestablish itself in a range of different contexts during the postcolonial period, Western scholars and museum ethnographers largely ignored it as a field of serious study and display.

Throwing knives (Fig. 21) were much in evidence at the Stanley exhibition, and we have devoted a case to them in order to suggest some new ways of looking at such objects, not least the importance of seeing each one as, in some sense, a human image. As with the cases displaying personal adornment and textiles, we have set the throwing knives in context by allowing the visitor to see through them to a case containing shields, such as those of the Azande, which were designed to carry this weapon.

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We have also broadened the category of what may be considered a weapon in an African context to include textiles, figures, drums, and even pots. The Kota brass- and copper-covered wooden figures mbulu ngulu ("image of the spirit of the dead") incorporate a stylized representation of a male head and coiffure with the distinctive features of both the Kota "bird-headed" knife, musele, and the Fang short sword, fa (Fig. 22). They suggest a being who is half man, half weapon, a combination wholly fitting for their role as guardians of reliquary bundles containing the remains of chiefs. By contrast, the significance of the applique banners of the Fante people of coastal Ghana (Fig. 23) has subtly changed over the centuries, from representing the military power of the asafo (war people) companies to suggesting the political and economic power they now represent. In the gallery; a video made by Gus Casely-Hayford documents two contrasting asafo festivals in Ghana today and gives a flavor of the vibrant visual language which underpins this dynamic tradition.

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We chose to display the work of the potter and the smith in the same gallery because of the opposed yet interdependent symbolic worlds occupied by these professions in much of Africa. Many African societies have a belief that women/potters created the natural world, men/blacksmiths the cultural world. If iron weapons may be seen as a means of representing the male body, pots most certainly provide models for thinking about the female form.

As with handwoven textiles, there are probably more pots being made in Africa today than at any time in the past. The beauty and versatility of this pottery and the variety of uses to which it is put are amply shown in the displays which include the burnished royal pottery of the Ganda (Fig. 24), one of the African sources of inspiration for the contemporary artist Magdalene Odundo. The work of contemporary artists is by no means confined to the first section of the galleries, and the pottery section offers a number of pieces by the Tunisian artist Khaled Ben Slimane (Fig. 25). It also illustrates the problems as well as the advantages of subdividing the galleries in the way we have done. For example, having decided on the San ostrich egg flask (Fig. 1) as the most fitting image to adorn the cover of the exhibition publication and the poster, we realized that we did not really have a category in which to put it. For the purposes of this exhibition, then, it appears as an "honorary pot."

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Despite problems such as this, and while not seeking to sum up so vast an area in one suite of galleries, we have deliberately placed as broad a range of material as possible on display. These 600-plus works include major, unique pieces (Fig. 26) and everyday items (Fig. 27). The ancient is explicitly mixed with the new so that chemical dyes jostle natural, plastic and cardboard are cheek by jowl with nineteenth-century basketry, and a modern Kenyan cricket shirt holds its own beside traditional east African arms and armor (Fig. 28).

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Our French colleagues of the Big MAC (the planned Musee du Quai Branly in Paris) are currently involved in a long-running and highly abstract philosophical debate about whether such material should be shown aesthetically or ethnographically--the implication being that one approach must be right and the other wrong. In the Sainsbury African Galleries the installation itself is highly aesthetic--white walls, open displays, enormous but very light cases, a clear plastic cliff of throwing knives frozen in mid-flight, a steel tree of pots that spirals up from floor to ceiling (Fig. 29), and a whole wall of Benin plaques floating on slim poles. This is partly the change in house style that comes with the move from a simply ethnographic museum to a more catholic institution, but it also recognizes the fact that curators and public are nowadays much more aware of the peculiarities of the museum gallery as a particular kind of space and that these can be frankly acknowledged and put to good use. The information panels and labels, on the other hand, are strongly ethnographic so that the exhibition can work at both levels. The result is that the tension between form and function of the pieces is not lost, but remains at about the level of the Western notion of "design." The very idea of "art," too, can be problematized in an exhibition of this kind by the use of video. Each section involves purpose-made videos, some with soundtrack, some without, that reincorporates material back into the societies from which it comes and so allows a shift of perspective: the activities depicted can be seen not as dead, or even as dramatically threatened, but as living and continuing traditions.

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Regular visitors to the Museum of Mankind will no doubt be reminded of exhibitions such as "Smashing Pots," "Play and Display," "Images of Africa," "Power of the Hand," and "Display and Modesty." (3) We have revisited and revised some of the themes we explored in these and other exhibitions, both as a celebration of past achievements and of the Ethnography Department's return to new galleries and a largely new audience at Bloomsbury. However, we do not see this as in any sense retrogressive, for by presenting these themes sequentially and in one space, and by suggesting their contextual associations, we have had a unique opportunity to pursue a cross-cultural, comparative, and historical approach which we hope will provide new perspectives on African arts and cultures.

It is important, of course, to show many of the star pieces that visitors expect to see and have sorely missed over the past few years of planning and building work, though some have been withheld from the present installation to allow for the rotation of environmentally sensitive objects. The Ife head, the Igbo Ukwu castings, the Benin bronzes, the Afro-Portuguese ivories, the Kuba king figures, and many other old friends have now returned to the British Museum in these spacious and airy galleries. But they find themselves in rather new company.

[This article was accepted for publication in June 2001.]

(1.) A book accompanies the gallery display: Africa: Arts and Cultures (ed. John Mack, British Museum Press, London, 2000).

A major African conference is being planned to take place in the new Clore Education Centre at the British Museum, probably during Easter 2004. At the time of writing we are still seeking funding for the conference, but if you wish to be kept informed of developments, please let us know by e-mail: [e-mail].

(2.) "Spirits in Steel: The Art of the Kalabari Masquerade," American Museum of Natural History, New York, April 1998-January 1999.

(3.) Many of these exhibitions were mounted at the Museum of Mankind for africa 95, a celebration of African arts held throughout Britain in August-December 1995.

NIGEL BARLEY is Assistant Keeper for West and Central Africa at the British Museum. He has conducted fieldwork in Cameroon, Nigeria, and Indonesia.

JULIE HUDSON is a curator at the British Museum with a specialist interest in the North African collections. She recently conducted fieldwork in Tunisia. Her publications include North African Textiles (with Christopher Spring; London, 1995).

CHRISTOPHER SPRING is an artist and writer, and is a curator with special responsibility for Northeast, East, and Southern African collections at the British Museum. His publications include North African Textiles (London, 1993), African Arms and Armour (London, 1993), and North African Textiles (with Julie Hudson; London, 1995). He recently conducted fieldwork in the Western Desert of Egypt and in Tunisia.