African art - Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York

The section devoted to Sahel and Savanna, with just over forty works displayed, was the smallest of the geographically oriented divisions and, in content, the weakest. The section opened promisingly with unusual antiquities, such as a 7th-century megalith from Mall and 10th-to-16th-century terra-cottas from the Sao culture complex in northern Nigeria and Chad. Overall, however, the regional representation was heavily weighted toward the Dogon of Mall, a people whose art and culture have fascinated Westerners ever since Marcel Griaule's initial anthropological study during the 1930s. While Dogon sculpture filled two divisions within this section, objects from Burkina Faso were largely overlooked, a serious omission in a survey exhibition. Also missing (for good reason) were the controversial Inland Niger Delta antiquities. Their absence was candidly addressed in the wall text leading to this section, which noted: "A host of brilliant terra-cottas and metal sculptures known from this area have for the most part been illicitly excavated and are consequently not included in this exhibition."

Circling to the top of the building, "West Africa and the Guinea Coast" was undoubtedly the crowning glory of the exhibition. Antiquities from present-day Nigeria were prominently represented and included an ample display of the well-known metalwork from the kingdom of Benin as well as a number of Esie soapstone figures (12th-15th centuries), less familiar to museum audiences. Masterpieces from the collections of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments in Nigeria highlighted this section. Among these was the so-called Dinya Head (Guggenheim cat. 57; Royal Academy cat. 6.47), a magnificent life-size terra-cotta head that originally was part of a larger figure. Unearthed accidentally by a tin miner in 1954, the head belongs to a corpus of fragmentary terra-cottas, dated 500 B.C. to A.D. 200, from a civilization known as the Nok culture located in present-day Nigeria. The rich artistic traditions of Ire, a Yoruba civilization established around 1100, were also well represented. Of particular note is the famed Tada figure, a spectacular representation of a seated male dating from the 13th to 14th century (Guggenheim cat. 60; Royal Academy cat. 5.64). Made of pure copper using the lost-wax method of casting, this large, naturalistic figure is sensitively rendered with careful attention paid to details of dress.

While rich in uncontested masterpieces of African art, "West Africa and the Guinea Coast" was particularly marked by scant visual reference to the indigenous framework for these objects, an absence that affected the entire exhibition. The section featured a variety of masks, an artistic tradition found in numerous cultures throughout sub-Saharan Africa, which demonstrated an astonishing range of stylistic, iconographic, and functional diversity. Unfortunately, none of the masks were displayed in their entirety, which would typically include a full-body covering as well as other embellishments to the sculpted headpiece. A few color photographs placed in the hallways provided the only glimpses of the incredible aesthetic experience of African masquerades. In another part of the installation, architectural works from various West African cultures were grouped together to explore the public functions of African sculpture. Again, though the object labels attempted to contextualize the works, the massive pillars and door frames lost considerable visual impact without a sense of their original setting.