Those of you who just can’t wait until 2007 can at least have the pleasure of visiting the BM’s African Galleries now. These are tall, pure, Norman Foster-designed spaces, sunk beneath the northern end of Foster’s Great Court with its toroidal latticework roof. However, they were not ready when the Great Court was: like many another new and revamped gallery in the BM, the exhibition designers came in to colonise the space later.
You do have to make a bit of an effort to find them - you must exit the Great Court to the north and then turn back on yourself - and, when you do, the approach is somewhat unnerving. You crank your way down a smooth, blank, limestone- lined staircase which feels very like the entrance to the tomb of a modern-day Pharaoh. Right continent, wrong culture. As it happens, the ancient Egyptians are very close, but they’re upstairs, not down here. Down here, you find later Africa - in particular, Equatorial Africa. The Africa of pots and masks and intricate metalwork and gorgeous clothes and ornaments. There are plenty of historic artefacts on display, but plenty that is of today, and you can’t necessarily tell the difference. This is the cultural Africa that used to be called “primitive” by the colonialists until the work of such people as Henry Moore and Picasso suggested that perhaps they had something to teach us, rather than vice-versa. It’s no surprise to find that the gallery is dedicated to Moore, nor that it is sponsored by the Sainsbury family, whose own ethnographic collection owes much to their early friendship with him.
Of course, you get only a flavour of the African collections, just 600 objects out of a mass of 200,000. But these include objects as diverse (though from the same part of the continent) as 16th century brass castings from Benin - curiously reminiscent of medieval Florence - and symbolic masquerade figures by the contemporary Nigerian-born sculptor Sokari Douglas Camp.
The galleries do what such galleries should do. You are not distracted by the architecture. The lighting and the proportions of the rooms are well contrived - you’re never uncomfortably aware of being underground. The layout is straightforward , with two L-shaped sections of gallery leading left and right from the entrance. The display - much of it in modern glass cases, with the occasional discreet video monitor but no tiresome interactive stuff - is laid out in eight very clear sections. Textiles here, woodcarving there, jewellery and brasscasting at one end, forged metal and pottery at the other. There’s enough space. Given that they had 200,000 objects to choose from, they have avoided the curse of museological clutter. And the stuff on display is just very, very, good.
My memory of the old Museum of Mankind - which, in common with almost everyone else, I hardly ever visited - was of a dark, mournful place stuck in a backstreet. The Sainsbury African Galleries make much more sense of the collection. The Mexican and North American galleries are already in the museum and will relatively soon be augmented by galleries for Asia, Central America, Europe and the Pacific.
All of which - along with an enormous Study Centre, with more galleries, that the BM intends to build inside the huge former West London Sorting Office two minutes away from its front door - should make it clear that the BM is about more than Egyptian mummies and the Elgin marbles. And all of which will leave the RA free to kick some sense into the unlamented old Museum of Mankind. It never quite worked on its own, its grand façade with its statues of academic worthies promising much but delivering little. But now, as a northern entrance to a revitalised and expanded Royal Academy, a few steps from the consumer paradise of Bond Street and linking straight through to Piccadilly, it looks as if it might finally have found itself a logical role. Though, of course, we’ll have to wait a few years before the music stops and we find out whether they’re sitting in the right place. But we’re used to waiting by now, aren’t we?
