Approaching the National Museum of African Art (NMAA), visitors were greeted by a banner advertising their recent exhibition, Good as Gold: Fashioning Senegalese Women (Fig. 1). The banner featured the image of an extravagantly dressed Senegalese woman, resplendent in her gravity-defying headdress (with matching dress and shawl), layers of gold jewelry, and a long pipe elegantly balanced between her lips. Photographed by Beninois-Belgian Fabrice Monteiro, the image functioned as the unofficial icon of Good as Gold, heralding the beauty of Senegalese jewelry and subtly introducing visitors to a key concept of the exhibition; sañse: “the presentation of an extraordinary public self—an extreme performance of elegance and sophistication” (Good as Gold exhibition).
Guest curator Amanda Maples, in collaboration with Smithsonian curator Kevin Dumouchelle, maximized the L-shaped space on sublevel 1 of the museum by creating an exhibition that was primarily composed of pieces from the collection of...