This exhibition highlights how the arts of Central and West Africa represent social themes across time. It places historic art alongside art made in the twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries to explore ideas of power, gender, and cultural appropriations. By displaying such diverse artworks together, this exhibition offers new ways to understand the aesthetic, political, and historical contexts of Central and West African art. This exhibition brings together works from the Museum’s permanent collection and loaned objects from the Wyvern Collection, a private collection that also includes medieval and renaissance art.

We invite you to view this digital exhibition, which complements a gallery exhibition at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.