The National Museum of China in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, recently trippled its exhibition place in a renovation and expansion that lasted about three and a half year. This makes it the largest museum in the world – it beats New York’s Metropolitan Museum, formerly the largest museum in the world, by about 20,000 square feet. The first exhibition?

On the occasion of the re-opening, several German museums and their curators were invited to create programming and exhibitions on the art of the Enlightenment: a survey of artifacts from an era of European creativity, scientific progress, and openness of thought.

This is in a period that China is embarking on what has been described as “the most intense crackdown on free expression in years”.

H/t Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen. Their weekly programme on pop culture and the arts is always a delight to listen to. It is also available as a podcast.

October last year I was at the Linden-Museum in Stuttgart. There is a floor dedicated to Africa, and a tiny section of that floor has some items from Nigeria. I took some pictures of the items.

Who remembers/recognises the items in the pictures below?

While in Ilorin last weekend I asked my friends about the tourist attractions in the city. They told me that there was one museum, which was not opened on a Satruday. Above is a picture of a part of the museum – The Moremi Ajasoro National Museum Hair-Do Centre.

And oh yea, the other important part – perhaps the most important, actually – is the bar in the same compound with the museum. As I learnt, there are normally drummers and singers to sing the praise of the patrons. Last Saturday was not any different.

What more does one want from a museum? At one side there is a centre for hair-do, at another there is an avenue for praise singing… ok, maybe it would have been nice to really see the holdings of the museum. But don’t forget that I said that the museum was close on Saturdays.