Historical works of African sculpture have become increasingly entangled with the global Black Lives Matter movement. A popular sign that was carried by protestors in the United Kingdom after the police killing of the unarmed African American man George Floyd in May 2020 read: “Don't like looting? You will hate the British Museum.” Meanwhile, a statement from the British Museum deploring Floyd's death and expressing solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement sparked thousands of tweets accusing the institution of hypocrisy and insensitivity. In June 2020, Paris Black Lives Matter demonstrators tried to seize artifacts at the Musée du Quai Branly.

The material lives of African sculptural objects are today intimately linked with Black diasporic experiences, and these connections are made explicit in the work of contemporary American artists Hugh Hayden (b. 1983) and Simone Leigh (b. 1967). Both Hayden and Leigh draw on African sculptural traditions, largely from West...

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