National Museum of African Art

The National Museum of African Art, architecturally almost a mirror of the Sackler, is small but visually interesting. I took pictures. I'm sorry it appears I didn't take any pictures of the typical statues, masks, etc. in the museum. (None are things I want in my home, and I forgot to photograph them for documentary purposes.)

I liked that every item has a description/explanation.

Though the museum supposedly has a large collection, only a little is on continuous display; most of the display space is devoted to special exhibits.

The Nigerian special exhibit had a few video displays, some of rare, old footage of ceremonies, some documentary. I appreciated that there was no talking in these films--whatever language there was was displayed on the screen. The only sound was African music, music that added a nice soundtrack to walking around the exhibit.

Inside this exhibit was an interesting sign with a discussion about the difficulty in determining provenance and origin of many of these pieces. Many of the items go into more detail about this issue, explaining how an item was collected in W and attributed to X (because that was where the person who sold it to a collector at W acquired it), and then thought to be from Y, but now historians think it's from Z because of ... Meanwhile, for some objects other labels admit that they cannot describe how the native peoples used them because no one has ever seen those objects in situ.

Months later, I returned for a special exhibit on the photographer Lalla Essaydi. A Moroccan by birth, many of her photographs are self-portraits of herself posed by Islamic architecture. Her clothes' pattern copy the building's pattern, making her part of / integrated with the scene. Sometimes she even paints her skin with henna script, accentuating the effect when there is similarly flowing writing nearby. It's a creative idea and the results are strangely fascinating.

In other photographs (and two paintings), she composed scenes modeled off famous paintings by Western artists, yet her composition includes Moroccan women and North African decorations. I also like this strategy, making art that comments on others' art.