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African Voices. A permanent exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Content Development Team: Mari Jo Arnoldi (1993-99), Mark Auslander (1995-99), Linda Heywood (1994-99), Ivan Karp (1993-97), Christine Mullen Kreamer (1993-99), Michael Atwood Mason (1994-99), Sulayman Niang (1995-99), Fath Ruffins (1993-94), Theresa Singleton (1994-98), and John Thornton (1994-99). Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

Entering the dim rotunda of the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History from the National Mall, one is immediately greeted by the museum's icon, a giant African elephant. Once billed as the largest ever captured, it is now cast ironically in the role of an explorer: "Trunk raised, ears fanned, this elephant is on the alert. Something has caught his attention and he's off to investigate." We're invited to follow his lead. Alert and with ears fanned, one turns right at the elephant's left tusk and is led on a circuitous journey through the museum's collections of dinosaurs of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, past the fossil mammals, and through the Ice Age. Directly after passing the skeleton of a giant mastodon and a diorama of a Neanderthal burial, this stroll through the earth's prehistoric ages abruptly ends in a wide bank of video screens filled with vibrant moving images and awash with the sounds of contemporary African pop stars such as Baaba Maal and Ang??lique Kidjo. "Come listen to the many voices of Africa," the video announces at this one of two orientation entryways to African Voices, a significant and new permanent exhibition on the history, cultures, and peoples of Africa.

African Voices, which opened in December 1999, is the most recent large-scale renovation at the Museum of Natural History. The product of a seven-year development process with broad involvement from various scholars and communities, the concept for redesigning the old "Hall of African Cultures" was born of public controversy as the culture wars were just beginning to heat up in the early 1990s. The result is ambitious, challenging, diverse, and entertaining. The goals of the exhibition are explicit: to present the diversity and dynamism of Africa by showing how Africans and peoples of African descent have created a variety of rich cultures throughout history and how they actively shape their lives and identities within a complex contemporary world. Implicit within these goals is a vital recognition of and attempt to dismantle a long history of Western stereotypes that have pictured Africa as the "dark continent"-in turns exotic, savage, monolithic, timeless, romantic, primitive-and the role that institutions like anthropological and natural history museums have at times played in producing and reifying those representations.

African Voices does some heavy lifting in this regard, and it does so by placing the voices of historical and living Africans at the heart of the exhibit. Linguistic, cultural, and geographic diversity is of central importance as extreme care is taken in educating the visitor that there is more than just one African history and culture. Within each one of the broad and unique national cultures portrayed (approximately 400 objects from fifty-four nations are on display), exists a rich and variegated diversity of art, life, and expression, which identifies itself across regions and local communities. Specific individuals (artists, entrepreneurs, priests, and others) are pictured and profiled throughout the exhibit. African voices are heard throughout, interpreting the objects on display, singing at interactive sound stations, and ringing out from multiple video recordings. There is, as well, a small theatre that shows two brief but compelling documentary films: one on resistance to slavery in the United States and Brazil, the other on the origins of Pan-Africanism and the fight against colonialism and apartheid (both American and South African versions).

As one might suspect from such an introduction, it would be an understatement to say that the reach of this exhibit is wide. African Voices is not merely satisfied with providing and interpreting material from each of the continent's nations and presenting a historical overview that reaches across the millennia. It also concerns itself with demonstrating how African cultures have become part of the fabric of life throughout the world, with a particular emphasis upon the Americas. It expansively profiles at least three African diasporas-one in the ancient world, one caused by the forced migration of the Atlantic slave trade, and the more contemporary migration of Africans throughout the globe. To a surprising degree, however, the exhibition's reach does not exceed its grasp, because of an inventive design and an engaging interpretive framework.

Six thematic galleries radiate off of the central spine, including "Living in Africa," "Kongo Crossroads," "Global Africa," "Working in Africa," "Wealth in Africa," and the "Market Crossroads." The "Living" section explores four regionally and culturally diverse African cities (Abidjan, Capetown, Tunis, and Kumpala) with interactive wallboards, asking questions such as "What kinds of communities do Africans belong to?" "How do these communities vary across the continent and around the world?" and "How have these communities changed over time?" The themes of syncretism and resistance are introduced at the "Kongo Crossroads" section and are later picked up and explored further in the large "Global Africa" section. Here objects from an Afro-Brazilian religious goods store are on display and audio of ex-slave interviews collected by the Works Progress Administration can be heard.

"Working in Africa," while deftly exploring the issues of farming, conservation, cultural tourism, and heritage in Tanzania, also takes the time to interpret the custom of creative recycling. Here refabricated objects depict the improvisatory practice that can be seen as a spiritual expression, an aesthetic stance, and/or a practice born of economic need. The "Market Crossroads" examines ideas of trade from the local to the international. Visually and aurally, the section recreates a marketplace in Accra, Ghana, picturing and profiling, among others, individual female vendors. The role of music and radio as a cultural and economic commodity, as well as a tool for building regional, national, and diasporic identity, is examined here through listening stations that allow visitors to sample selections from Georges Collinet's Afropop Worldwide radio show. "Wealth in Africa" invites visitors to think more deeply about the many forms of wealth-from money to knowledge and other forms of cultural capital-that are valued throughout African communities.

The care given to interrelate these six thematic galleries makes for a rich experience as questions about living, working, spirituality, resistance, oppression, art, the market, and the environment can and do arise in any section of the exhibit, providing the visitor with multiple options for generating thoughtful questions. The juxtaposition of an incredibly wide variety of objects provides a context whereby boundaries between high and low, sacred and secular, local and global, and political and personal are tested, demonstrating that meaning can be found in and conveyed through all aspects of material culture. Furthermore, orientation to other collections throughout the Smithsonian (such as the Museum of African Art, the American History Museum, and the Sackler Gallery) is offered at appropriate spaces throughout the exhibit for visitors who wish to more fully explore topics related to Africa and the African diaspora. It is interesting to note that, in these attempts to redirect the visitor, we are forced to encounter the main deficiency of the exhibit: space, or lack thereof.