The art of Mali takes many diverse forms, but it all celebrates the bonds of the communities that create it.
13th century–present
The art of Mali takes many diverse forms, but it all celebrates the bonds of the communities that create it.
13th century–present
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Fun and festive, Nuit de Noël (Happy Couple) is exemplary of Malick Sidibé’s best known body of work: photographs of young people at social gatherings and events during the 1960s and 1970s.
Timbuktu was an intellectual and spiritual capital and a center for the propagation of Islam throughout Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries
This tomb bears testimony to the power and riches of the empire that flourished in the 15th and 16th centuries through its control of the trans-Saharan trade, notably in salt and gold
A heroic effort to save and preserve Mali's long manuscript tradition.
Are these little-understood figures representations of diseased people, or an attempt to ward off illness?
Studio photography produced mementos for the growing middle class: Keïta’s Bamako studio was abuzz with clients.
Intended to intimidate, this headdress was used by a member of the powerful Kumo society of blacksmiths.
These headdresses celebrate the divine Ci Wara, half man and half antelope, who introduced humans to agriculture.
Kanaga masks were traditionally worn during the dama, a six-day long funerary ritual for Dogon men.
This hunched figure is a large part of the material record of an egalitarian society that disappeared around 1400.
Is this a couple, or could this pair relate to a story from Dogon cosmology?
Each of these works embodies complementary Bamana ideals of physical beauty and moral character
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