Unless you know the road you have come down, you cannot know where you are going.
--Temne proverb, Sierra Leone
In December 1999 the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History celebrated the opening of "African Voices" (Fig. 1). It had kept its promise, made seven years earlier, to open a new permanent hall of African history and cultures. Developed with substantial community involvement, this exhibition expresses a broad consensus about how to represent Africa and the ...