“New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations,” New Orleans Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 264 pages.
The New Orleans Museum of Art’s New African Masquerades exhibition, which closes on August 10, is, so far, the city’s must-see show of the year. It showcases the work of four contemporary West and Central African masquerade artists, each representing a distinct culture and creative style.
African masquerade ensembles are recognizably Carnivalesque, yet not aligned with Carnival as we know it. The exquisite, multifaceted ensembles at times carry an uncanny aesthetic resonance with the suits of New Orleans’s Black Masking Indians.
Though the transatlantic Carnival connections are never explicitly stated — and the exhibit is strengthened for not belaboring this kinship — it’s easy to imagine deep, cross-cultural ties among this diverse world of street parades…