“Visions from the Forests: The Art of Liberia and Sierra Leone” will be on view at the National Museum of African Art April 9 through Aug. 17. The exhibition features some 70 artworks from the collection of William Siegmann (1943–2011) that survey the traditional arts of Liberia and Sierra Leone. Siegmann, a former curator of African art at the Brooklyn Museum, lived and worked in Liberia from 1965 to 1987. While there, he began collecting art from Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Siegmann’s collection, particularly rich in masks, provides an overview of the region’s traditional art forms, including numerous objects used in men’s and women’s initiation associations, jewelry and prestige objects of cast brass and horn, small stone figures dating from the 15th to the 18th centuries, and woven and dyed textiles.
The exhibition, making its debut at the National Museum of African Art, is organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in Minnesota. It is accompanied by a scholarly catalog that includes an essay on connoisseurship by Christine Mullen Kreamer, the National Museum of African Art’s deputy director and chief curator.
The National Museum of African Art is the nation’s premier museum dedicated exclusively to the collection, conservation, study and exhibition of Africa’s traditional and contemporary arts. The museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (closed Dec. 25). Admission is free. The museum is located at 950 Independence Ave. S.W., near the Smithsonian Metrorail station on the Blue and Orange lines. For more information, call (202) 633-4600.
