Visions from the Forests: Art of Liberia and Sierra Leone

Visions from the Forests: The Art of Liberia and Sierra Leone will be on view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art through Aug. 17. The exhibition features some seventy 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, and his 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.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Images courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art