My doctoral project explores how changing perceptions of Africa in the early postcolonial era were both shaped and reflected by Western museum practice, with a specific focus on the representation of Nigerian art in museums in Glasgow. The project will foreground the career and thought of Frank Willett, an expert in Nigerian art and the first professional director of the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow, drawing extensively on Willett's archives held by the University of Glasgow. This archival research will be supported by interviews both of individuals who knew or worked with Willett and those with lived experience of the era immediately preceding and following Nigerian independence in 1960.