African Museums and Galleries

Copyright Courtesy Horniman Museum/Michael Harding

London is home to wonderful collections of African treasures.

Museums and Galleries

Horniman Museum

The permanent African collection at the Horniman Museum has somewhere in the region of 22,000 objects. The objects and artefacts span the whole continent and include sculptures, masks (see Igbo liele - Nigeria's largest mask), religious altars from Benin, Egyptian mummies and weapons.

Petrie Museum

A 2-room gallery that's mainly used by students for research, the Petrie Museum has an estimated 80,000 objects, making it one of the greatest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology in the world. It also includes colourful tiles, carvings and frescoes from important Egyptian and Nubian settlements and burial sites.

The Sainsbury African Galleries

There are over 200,000 objects – archaeological and contemporary – in the African Galleries in the basement of the British Museum. Main highlights include Asante gold work from Ghana and the Torday collection of Central African sculpture, textiles and weaponry. Video clips illustrate the use of masks as part of the culture of masquerade, and other objects within the collection feature textiles, pottery, woodcarving and personal adornment.