Recent discourses surrounding the museum representation of African art have generated complex and often heated debates. Some of the thorniest questions have centered on curatorial authority, the colonial legacies of institutional collecting practices, and the display of culturally sensitive objects. Polly Savage has previously argued in the pages of African Arts that the display of African art in Western museums is particularly vexing due to the objects' implied corporeal absence (2008: 74). Masks and other objects related to masquerade practices, for example, are part of much broader cosmological systems. When African artworks are displayed as discrete objects, they withhold much more information than they actually reveal. Moreover, how African artworks have made their way into museum collections has also opened up spaces of contestation. Curators are therefore challenged to consider new and innovative approaches to the exhibition of African art that probe more deeply into the histories of objects and...

You do not currently have access to this content.