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Permanent exhibition

Exhibition objects

Africa

West Africa

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Deprived of their costumes, adornments, torchlight and rhythmic movements, the "masks" are no longer what they were when they danced in their original context; in the museum they become mere fragments. But they escape from their dry ethnic classification to conjure up some of the great cults of sub-Saharan Africa which have existed alongside Islam since the eleventh century.


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