This beautifully illustrated volume was published as a catalogue to accompany an exhibition of the same name first held at the National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. The exhibition later traveled to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Indiana Art Museum, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. Both the exhibition and catalogue were produced in remembrance of the late William Siegmann (1943–2011), a native of Minneapolis who lived for more than a decade in Liberia and frequently traveled to West Africa. A member of the faculty of Cuttington College (later Cuttington University) in Monrovia, Liberia, he directed its Africana Museum and later served as director of the National Museum of Liberia. From 1987 until 2007 Siegmann was the curator of African and Oceanic art at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City.

The volume begins with a tribute to Siegmann containing comments from him that were recorded in the last months of his life as well as those of a number of scholars and curators who knew him. This section is richly illustrated with field photographs of Siegmann and the museum galleries he created in Monrovia. The following section, “Visions from the Forests,” contains seven essays. In “Forests in the Imagination of the Upper Guinea Coast,” Mariane C. Ferme and Paul Richards discuss the complex relationships that have developed between humans and the forest over time. As the source of materials used in rituals and the abode of spirits and supernatural forces, the forest has long been involved in belief systems and initiatory practices in this area of Africa. However, as the authors note, the forest is also the source of wealth from minerals and lumber, and vulnerable to clearing for rice farming. The resulting environmental changes have inevitably shaped the nature of the forest’s symbolic and spiritual role in masquerades.

In “Extending the Stage: Photography and Sande Initiates in the Early Twentieth Century,” Nanina Guyer explores the early photographs of Sande initiates as well as the history of their later use. Any discussion of this topic inevitably focuses on the work of two men—Thomas Joshua Alldridge, a British colonial administrator in Sierra Leone, and Alphonso Lisk-Carew, a Creole studio photographer in Freetown, Sierra Leone—and their different approaches as photographers. Alldridge was essentially a pioneer ethnographer who meticulously documented Sande initiation both through photographs and extensive descriptions in his published works, including The Sherbro and Its Hinterland (Macmillan, 1901), and A Transformed Colony: Sierra Leone as It Was, and as It Is (Seeley & Co.,1910). By comparison, Lisk-Carew was a studio photographer accustomed to staged visual presentations. However, the opening of a railway gave him access to nearby rural areas, where he was able to photograph Sande initiates in their home environments. Unlike Alldridge, Lisk-Carew converted these images into postcards which were sold primarily to colonial-era Europeans in Sierra Leone and elsewhere. As Gruyer notes, some of these images were later exploited for commercial purposes and altered in the interests of sensationalizing them. Gruyer’s discussion of the willingness of Sande leaders to allow men to photograph their initiates demonstrates that while these men were willing to relax their own rules to some degree, they drew the line when it came to photographing initiates in their forest enclosure.

Frederick John Lamp’s essay, “‘By Their Fruits You Will Know Them’: Sande Mask Carvers Identified,” breaks much new ground in its discussion of workshops that created specific Bundu (Bondo) helmet masks, some of whose locations were initially identified by Siegmann. He observes that it is almost impossible now to identify the specific creators of masks sculpted in the past, and that Africans, in fact, are not necessarily interested in such attribution (as opposed to Westerners, who wish to praise and give credit to artists who would otherwise remain anonymous). Nevertheless, while it may not be possible to identify individual artists, Lamp has been able, based on stylistic analysis, to delineate ninety-four workshops and a vast array of styles of Sande helmet masks—a major achievement.

Other essays in this volume include “Spirits from the Forest: Dan Masks in Performance and Everyday Life” by Daniel B. Reed; “Brass Casting in Liberia” by Barbara C. Johnson; “Ritual Recycling: Modern Uses of Ancient Stone Sculptures in the Upper Guinea Forest Region” by Jan-Lodewijk Grooters; and “William Siegmann, Advocate for Connoisseurship” by Christine Mullen Kraemer.

This last essay discusses Siegmann’s remarkable ability to evaluate objects aesthetically and to render judgments on their authenticity. Such connoisseurship is especially valued in the world of traditional African art where fakes and copies are expertly made and artificially patinated and eroded to enable them to enter an international market. It is a capacity that requires deliberate exposure to vast numbers of objects and one that is sadly lacking, Kraemer notes, among many younger scholars who are uniquely focused on contemporary African art. Unlike most African art historians Siegmann was also a collector whose bequests to various museums, most prominently the Brooklyn Museum, significantly enriched their holdings of African art.

Visions from the Forests is a superb multi-author volume that comprehensively and authoritatively discusses the impressive diversity of art objects created by traditional artists in Liberia and Sierra Leone over many decades. The catalogue section of the volume presents seventy-two objects of outstanding quality grouped into thirteen categories and accompanied by excellent captions. The book is a wonderful tribute to the late William Siegmann, who so cherished the art of this region and admirably served its peoples over many years. It will be of great interest to a broad readership of those interested in Africa and its artistic traditions.