After Apartheid, a Fresh Look at History ; South African Museums Are Exploring the Once-Forbidden Subject of Black Culture

Beginning of article

For almost 40 years, they stood half naked under glaring lights in a museum of fossils, whale skeletons, and stuffed animal specimens. The exhibit on Southern Africa's first human inhabitants, the "Bushmen," was testimony to the long-held belief that blacks were subhuman, no more advanced that the antelope in the next room.

The removal last April of the controversial "Bushman diorama" from the South Africa Museum in Cape Town signals the transformation of this nation's museums in the seven years since the end of apartheid. Once shrines to white achievements and superiority, museums increasingly reflect the ideals of this diverse and newly democratic nation. …