Readers hit the ground running across Washington, DC, with the curator/author in the opening pages of Earth Matters. As she jogs through a dense city to a dirt trail, her footsteps lead the reader into a vast network of encounters with art and artists who are all compelled to look at the earth beneath us. There is no mistaking the enormous commitment that the curator and the National Museum of African Art made to harness the resources of the Smithsonian and expand the ways that museums are encouraging audiences of the twenty-first century to look at a complex subject with global ramifications.
Earth Matters completes a triad of thematic exhibitions and publications developed by the National Museum, which featured Inscribing Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art in 2007 and African Cosmos: Stellar Arts in 2012. Each of these endeavors have showcased the capacity of the museum to identify...