The reception and exhibition are free and open to the public. 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. The exhibition celebrates a major donation of African tribal objects from a prominent collector of African ethnographic objects, philanthropist William Brill of New York City. The three donations increase the holdings of African art in the museum to more than 1,500 pieces, making it the largest repository of African art in this region. Artifacts are used as elements of celebration and in ceremonies that document rites of passage - birth and initiation, courtship and marriage, and death.
Masks are well represented in the exhibition.
African masks serve in ceremonies to educate, for social control, as spirit repositories, to petition the spirits, for initiation and fertility rites and for many other purposes depending on the mask, the culture and the occasion. Some masks are not even seen by the audience, but are worn on the top of the head facing the sky. Included in the exhibit is a Suku mask with rounded features, used in boys' initiation ceremonies. The Hemba people believe chimpanzees prey on humans. The So'o often appears at funeral festivals and disrupts the audience in the midst of mourning.