“Baga” art, from Guinea-Conakry, is one of the most famous of sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, surprisingly, the masks, statuettes, drums, and stools presented under this label at the Centre de la Vieille Charité in Marseille had never before been gathered together in France. All of the pieces came from the private museum opened forty years ago in Geneva by the late Jean-Paul Barbier-Mueller. It was the third time that the Musée d'Arts Africains, Océaniens, Amérindiens in Marseille (MAAOA), whose collections formerly benefited from gifts by the prominent Swiss art collector and sponsor (Pourtal Sourrieu 2013: 13), organized an exhibition with the institution that bears his name.
Under the curatorship of Marianne Pourtal Sourrieu, head of MAAOA, the exhibition took place in Pierre Puget's (1620–1694) chapel of la Vielle Charité, a refined Baroque building erected in the center of a courtyard elegantly framed by galleries (Fig. 1). The...