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FIG. 15 (left): Male fi gure.
Bamum artist. Fumban,
Grassfi elds region,
Cameroon.
Late 19th century.
Wood, brass, cloth, glass beads,
cowrie shells. H: 160 cm.
National Museum of African Art,
Smithsonian Institution, gift of Evelyn
A. J. Hall and John A. Friede,
inv. 85-8-1.
Photo: Franko Khoury.
FIG. 16 (below):
Female fi gure, fragment of
a slit gong.
Mbembe artist. Cross River
State, Nigeria.
19th to early 20th century.
Wood, lead, pigment. H: 68 cm.
National Museum of African Art,
Smithsonian Institution, museum
purchase, inv. 85-1-12.
Photo: Franko Khoury.
FIG. 17 (below right):
Male fi gure, fragment of a
slit gong.
Mbembe artist. Cross River
State, Nigeria.
19th to early 20th century.
Wood, lead, pigment, iron.
National Museum of African Art,
Smithsonian Institution, gift of
Heinrich Schweizer in memory of
Merton D. Simpson, inv. 2016-12-1.
Photo: Franko Khoury.
FIG. 18 (above right):
Commemorative head of
a king.
Edo artist. Benin, Edo State,
Nigeria. 18th century.
Copper alloy, iron. H: 33 cm.
National Museum of African
Art, Smithsonian Institution, gift
of Joseph H. Hirshhorn to the
Smithsonian Institution in 1979,
inv. 85-19-16.
Photo: Franko Khoury.
tion relies upon the solid scholarship, eye for
quality, and technical expertise that curators
and conservators bring to their work. This gallery
will include a changing display of recent acquisitions
and a selection of objects that refl ect
the research and collecting interests of former
and current museum staff members, as well as
the generosity of donors who have chosen to
share their passion for the arts of Africa with
the world.
The museum’s celebrated beaded fi gure made
by a Bamum artist commissioned by King
Njoya (fi g. 15) will be presented here as a case
study in engaged curatorial practice. This rare
freestanding male fi gure was in the collection
of the Berlin Museum für Völkerkunde from
1908 to 1924. King Njoya (c. 1876–1933) of
Bamum gave it to Germany to commemorate
colonial offi cial Captain Hans Glauning. During
her years leading the museum’s Eliot Elisofon
Photographic Archives, Christraud Geary
undertook research that expanded our understanding
of this fi gure and the iconography of
art from this region to illuminate how King
Njoya strategically used art and photography
to enhance the prominence of his kingdom and
himself during the colonial period. Similarly, an
eighteenth-century head by an Edo artist (fi g.
18), along with a selection of nine of the museum’s
plaques and related objects, will speak
to the National Museum’s historic strength in
the arts of the Kingdom of Benin.
Finally, “Museum Insights” will present regularly
rotating selections of new acquisitions for
the collection. One of the inaugural showpieces
will be a pair of fi gural slit gong fi nials by
an Mbembe artist—reunited and presented in
their original alignment. The female member of
this pair (fi g. 16) had been a key work in the
museum’s collection for more than thirty years
when it appeared in the 2014 Metropolitan
Museum exhibition on the subject along with a
work that appeared to be her mate. Later conservation
and curatorial research proved that
they are, indeed, a match. The male fi gure (fi g.
17) was generously donated to the museum last
year and will premiere here as a back-to-back
composition.
Womanology 12 (2014), a stunning new work
by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (fi g. 19), a globally