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Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
African cloth patterns
First Floor | Exhibit

African Voices

Permanent
Location map

Africa’s People and Cultures

The people of Africa have profoundly influenced global culture and history—and continue to do so today. In this 6,500-square-foot exhibition, meet individuals from around the African continent; encounter the proverbs, music, prayers, and written word representing both everyday people and historical figures; and engage with more than 400 objects that explore commerce, art, political activism, and community life from a diversity of communities and personal viewpoints.

"Unless you know the road you've come down, you cannot know where you are going."
—Temne proverb, Sierra Leone

a ciwara headdress

Look For

A portable home used in Somalia by herding communities in the African Voices exhibit.
An aqal, a portable home used in Somalia by herding communities, and listen as two Somali immigrants recall their early lives in the aqal
A recreation of a Ghanaian marketplace in the African Voices Exhibit
The Market Crossroads, a re-creation of a busy marketplace in Accra, Ghana, where you can view goods from yams to kola nuts to kitchenware and learn why the market remains a central part of Ghanaian daily life
Two wooden antelope masks with a white background.
Two ciwara—wooden antelope masks—representing the mythical animals that taught farming to the Bamana people of Mali
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Things To Do

  • Pause in any of 11 “listening stations” to hear Africans’ stories in their own words, as well as music and atmospheric soundscapes.
  • Step into the Mud Masons of Mali gallery to learn how tradesmen in the ancient city of Djenné build and re-build the community’s beautiful and distinctive buildings and historic mosque from baked-earth bricks and plaster.
  • Stop by the Freedom Theater to watch two short films: “Atlantic Slave Trade” and “The Struggle for Freedom.”

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