African material culture occupies a prominent part of the contemporary western museum scene. However, despite the efforts, African objects in museums (but generally all non-western objects) still are perceived as records of epic journeys, as exotic curiosities or as tribal fetishes. Particularly, regarding ceremonial African objects, their religious significance is mainly subordinated to the artistic value or the ethnographic interpretation. The consequence of this “attitude” is a “misinterpretation” of their religious essence. Indeed, in displaying non-western religious objects, contemporary museums have to face the challenge of making an appropriate balance between words, symbolic images, ceremonial objects, religious core and respect. Therefore, this paper raises the following questions: what do we understand of African/Yoruba beliefs? Can westerners decode their religious “language”?

How do African/Yoruba people perceive today the western interpretation of the their intangible heritage in museums? This paper is based on the results of my PhD research: a pivotal tool has been a temporary exhibition (“Objects of religion: Yoruba beliefs displayed”) I have organised in Nottingham. The main message of the exhibition (centred on a Yoruba collection of the late 1800s) has been to consider religious beliefs as part of the religious language, “spoken” during every moment of people’s life; religious objects have been considered as the materialisation of a dialogue between human beings and their gods, dialogue which interlaces human needs and devotion. The cooperation with some Yorubas of Leicester and Nottingham has been essential to identify the meanings of the objects and the contemporary stereotypes in relation to their traditional religious heritage.