The main part of this assignment is to look for an image of a work of African art that interests you and be ready to explain why. I'll suggest you look in one of the following places:

• The National Museum of African Art. The search page for the museum's collections (http://www.nmafa.si.edu/pubaccess/index.htm) will give you a number of ways of exploring them. (The "Current Tours" page seems not to have been updated recently and won't allow you to browse on line; however, at least some of the pdf documents seem to be available.) To record the image you find at this sight, note its object number; this a series of three numerals separated by dashes that appears at the end of the data about the object. If you happen to explore the museum's exhibitions instead of its collections, you won't find object numbers, and you'll need to remember the exhibition and its place in it. In either case, don't expect a URL to be enough information to identify a particular image.
• The American Museum of Natural History. This is not an art museum and its collections are not limited to works of art, but it does have a very large number of objects that you can look over relatively quickly, and it allows you to see fairly large images. Go to the main page for African material:
  http://anthro.amnh.org/anthropology/databases/africa_public/africa_public.htm
  Choosing a country or culture (or both) and clicking on "Search" will bring you to a display of thumbnails for all objects meeting those criteria; these will be arranged as a series of pages with a dozen images on each. Clicking on any of thumbnails will bring up a larger image of the object. (Clicking on "Information View" will bring up a series of medium size illustrations with explanatory text; you can return to the smallest size by clicking on "Gallery View.") The pages with the largest images have URLs that you can bookmark or copy; but they are long, so the easiest way of recording the image you've seen is to note its catalog number, which will appear in square brackets under the image in either of the larger views (and should take the form of three numerals separated by a period and a slash). You can find your way back using the catalog number by choosing "Catalog No." for the "Search in" field (making sure you have chosen "Africa" and "-All-" for "Culture" or else have chosen the country or culture the object is from).
• The Wielgus Collection at IU. This is the collection we will visit on the trip to Bloomington. Go to the main page for the collection at http://www.iub.edu/~iuam/online_modules/wielgus/ and choose either "West Africa" or "Central Africa." Each will bring up a page with a series of images; clicking on the underlined description will bring up a larger image, and clicking on "enlarge" to the upper right of it will bring up a still larger one. There a catalog numbers here but no search page, so you'll need to remember which of the two pages your object is on and what it looks like (each page has less than a dozen images).

I have also selected a few images that have connections with things you have read or will read in the course. They are not intended as a representative sample of African art. You will need to look around on your own at the sites above to get a sense of its range.

• Mangbetu jars from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (the Mangbetu are the group Keim studied and that used as an example on H-13):
  • Go to the page http://www.nmafa.si.edu/pubaccess/pages/advanfrm.htm at the National Museum of African Art (or go to the museum main page http://www.nmafa.si.edu/ click on "Collections" and then on "Advanced Search"). Go to the field "Object Number" at the bottom of the page, enter the number 88-3-1, and click on "Begin Search". When a page showing the object appears, click on "Full Record" to get a larger image and fuller description.
  • For a larger image of a similar jar, go to the this page (at the American Museum of Natural History)
• Equestrian statue from Mali:
  • Go to the page http://www.nmafa.si.edu/pubaccess/pages/advanfrm.htm at the National Museum of African Art (or go to the museum main page http://www.nmafa.si.edu/ click on "Collections" and then on "Advanced Search"). Go to the field "Object Number" at the bottom of the page, enter the number 86-12-2, and click on "Begin Search". When a page showing the object appears, click on "Full Record" to get a larger image and fuller description.
• Shields from the Kikuyu region of Kenya (where The River Between takes place):
  • Go to the page http://www.nmafa.si.edu/pubaccess/pages/advanfrm.htm at the National Museum of African Art (or go to the museum main page http://www.nmafa.si.edu/ click on "Collections" and then on "Advanced Search"). Go to the field "Object Number" at the bottom of the page, enter the number 76-13-3, and click on "Begin Search". When a page showing the object appears, click on "Full Record" to get a larger image and fuller description.
  • For larger images of similar shields, go to the following pages (at the American Museum of Natural History): shield 1, shield 2, shield 3
• A coffin by Kane Kwei (1922-1992) of Ghana (who was the originator of figurative coffins like those illustrated on K-1 of the readings book):
  • Go to this page at the image base for the San Francisco arts museums; then choose a monitor size to get a larger image (anything but the smallest size seems to have roughly the same effect for this image).