As I approached the Fondation Cartier on a rainy day in January, excitement seemed to spill over the building's glass walls and onto the street, where hundreds of expectant patrons waited in a line stretching down the block. The crowd had flocked to see “Beauté Congo—1926–2015—Congo Kitoko,” an exhibition devoted to the past ninety years of artistic production in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), curated by André Magnin (Figs. 1a–c). Inside, winter coats competed with strollers for extra space in the packed galleries. A sense of celebration filled the rooms, aided by the sounds of Congolese popular music that caught one's ear while passing by the various listening stations that formed part of the exhibition.
The growing interest in contemporary African art has been well covered both in scholarly publications and in the news media. Rarer, however, is a focus on the contemporary arts from one specific...