Yet in the NMAfA show much of the work is quietly upbeat, from a steady-eyed self-portrait by the great South African artist and visual activist, Zanele Muholi; to a luminous photograph of an upwardly gazing male couple in a luminous photo by Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955-1989); to an ethereal installation by Paul Emmanuel, an artist born in Zambia and now living between Johannesburg and Washington.

Combining a draped and translucent military parachute with two drawings, one of a pair of dark-skinned male hands, the other of light-skinned male feet, it might be read as a vision of safe landing in the supportive company of brotherhood across racial and affectional lines.

Tsedaye Makonnen’s ethereal sculptures make a bold impression at the National Museum of African Art — but there’s much more than first meets the eye.

The medium is the message
here: bright colors, flashy imagery, comic
book-style fonts, and commentary in the
style of LP record liner notes evoke what
Robert Farris Thompson (1973) dubbed
an “aesthetic of the cool,” a distinctive
pan-African sensibility that is polyrhythmic,
highly immersive, and predicated on the
free-flowing circulation of intersubjective
experience and energies between audience,
artist, and performer.

Dumouchelle cleverly integrates the familiar genre of the art catalogue with the look and feel of a graphic
novel, recalling the dynamism of superherocomics series. The book also has the look and feel of some of the greatest African and diasporic musical albums, from Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s Black President and King
Sunny Ade’s Juju to Bob Marley and the Wailer’s Exodus. Appropriately, the volume is presented in conjunction with an irresistible musical playlist...

Dumouchelle...has installed works from the museum’s collection in a dazzling, provocative way. Pairing the classical with the contemporary, he ...engages audiences with an interactive digital app, a lively playlist piped in to the museum’s atrium (available on Spotify), and splashy fonts and bold graphics for the wall text. Taken together, such strategies yield an immersive and playful experience that draws audiences of all ages into a dense survey of aesthetic and political history.

Heroes is, above all accessible. There are literally and conceptually multiple points of entry into the show, and elementary school groups and scholars alike find different vantages from which to connect with the objects, all concisely situated both in history and, anew, in their connection to the show’s titular “principles of African greatness.”

Heroes begins the work of creating a new pantheon during a time of political turbulence, and takes seriously a host of ongoing debates about the arts of Africa in national collections.

A lot of museum shows make self-conscious gestures toward inclusion — high plus low, global plus local, insider plus outsider — but this one takes big-picture inclusivity, with its contradictions and confusions, as a primary subject.

This striking exhibition is organized into seven sections that highlight the perspectives of the many people involved with these artworks: the collectors who buy them, the scholars who study them, the artists who created them, the sponsors who commissioned them or who they were created for, the performers who may have used them in ceremonies, the museums that display them, and you, the visitor. Every section is designed to teach a better understanding of the artists’ intent, how the works made an impact and their ongoing lives in collections and museums.

At every turn, the show demands engagement. Upon entering each new area visitors are confronted by critical questions at eye level in red text. For example, “Why do people commission artworks?”; “What makes a great artist?”; “How do you find the key visual details that reveal many different stories about Africa’s arts?” and “Is there a particular artwork by a Yoruba artist that captures your attention? Why do you think that is?”

The questions are designed to invite visitors into a conversation with the art, explains National Museum of African Art Curator Kevin Dumouchelle.

After joining the staff in October 2016, Dumouchelle, a former Brooklyn Museum curator, says Visionary was a wonderful way to begin his tenure at the National Museum of African Art. “I got to learn the collection firsthand, but I also had the chance to learn everyone at the museum and their personalities, their roles and their secret hidden talents and strengths,” he says.

“African masks as we have come to know them and expect to see them in Western context are really just a fragment of a lost performance of works that were once contemporary but are now frozen in time,” explains exhibition curator, Kevin Dumouchelle.

"I want the audience to really understand African masquerade as this font of incredible creativity,” says Dumouchelle. “It is a dynamic and exciting artistic platform that changes every time it's performed and is a part of a rich longstanding tradition of artists engaging with and trying to change the world.” He adds, “Leaving this show, I hope that our visitors are able to look a little more critically at both contemporary and historical art."

Alongside the exponential growth of major African art exhibitions such as the prestigious Dak'Art Biennale, and newer events like 1:54 Contemporary Art Fair and Lagos Photo Festival, which provide increased visibility and a necessary platform for contemporary artists from Africa and the African diaspora to showcase their work, Double Take's novel approach to mapping strains of influence within diverse works of African art through the ages highlights the long and nuanced history of the continent's artistic mastery.

Anatsui’s installation process is even more flexible...curators may ruffle the surfaces of the wall hangings as they please, smoothing old wrinkles or developing new ones. You may fall in love with a piece in one show and not even recognize it on its next outing.