Let there be light

West African Textiles and Costumes, the Horniman Museum, London

The bar has been set high for the Horniman Museum's annual Textile Gallery exhibition - this year it's West African Textiles and Costumes, which runs until 1 January 2006.

The Horniman has had plentiful support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Designation Challenge Fund in recent years, and more than 750,000 visitors have travelled to this haven off the South Circular Road since the Centenary Development was added in 2002.

It is one of my favourite museums because of the witty illustration of evolving anthropological theory in the Centenary Gallery, plus one of the most beautiful displays in any museum, anywhere: the Music Gallery. And then there's the aquarium, and the bizarre walrus squatting on its plinth in the vaulted Natural History Gallery. Perhaps that is why I feel so disappointed with this show.

There is nothing wrong with the museum's intentions. It is using a difficult space, compromised by a damp external wall, to give a public airing to an annual selection from the 6,500 textile objects stored in its Study and Education Centre.

Let's start at the very beginning. You look on the museum
website - there is little there about this exhibition, a near-absence echoed in the museum foyer. Then after making what seems like a dishearteningly symbolic journey from the clarity and brightness of the

Horniman's new entrance to the dark continent of the balcony gallery in the original building, you see a dingy slab hanging in a showcase at the far end of the gallery. You've no idea that it's anything special. But of course it is a magnificent indigo resist-dyed adire cloth along with its starch-painted template.

Alongside is a tie-dyed design known as moons and fruits, which, the caption sternly tells us, is 'a poetic name for a pattern of big and small circles: it has no other meaning'.

These are Yoruba textiles from Nigeria and Sierra Leone, where communities of liberated slaves settled in the early 19th century. Yoruba is one of the world's great civilisations: Yoruba-speaking peoples were in the forefront of opposition to colonial rule, promoting the development of modern west African society, and the history of these textiles is tied up with the evolution of a modern Yoruba identity over the course of the 20th century.

The adire cloths, the glittering woven strips of aso oke displayed along with them, and the superb embroidered gowns that are now a popular form of national dress in Nigeria all have the potential to resonate with the Horniman's multicultural audience.

Sadly, the light levels in two of the three textile display areas are so low that the objects cannot be seen properly and therefore experienced in any real sense. Even though some of the gallery's lightbulbs were not working at the time I visited, the light levels in this area of the Horniman are so dim that a few extra bulbs may not have made much difference.

Let's look at the decision-making here. If we assume that 80 per cent of the 6,500 textiles in the Study and Education Centre are displayable, and that each annual show in the Textile Gallery includes 50 objects, each piece will see the light once every 104 years.

It could be Topshop-bright and these objects would suffer no significant damage in relation to the imperative for them to be seen and understood. This isn't conservation, it's embalming.

What about intellectual access? The adire are shown alongside their production methods, the indigo balls, and the fascinating folded, stitched and starched pre-dyeing cloth. They are pristine, revealing little of themselves beyond their role as objects of beauty and technical skill.

It's the same with the Yoruba hats, and the aso oke immaculately mounted on Perspex rollers. Why and how were textiles collected by the mysterious Nancy Stansfield? What does the curious file and set of samples revealing their age by yellowing sticky tape mean by her handwritten note: 'Nigeria weaving and adire samples 5p each?'

There is no digital access, and no handout to lead beyond the objects displayed. Alongside the textiles are photographs showing traditional costume being worn in West Africa, as well as its reinterpretation on the streets of London today. These are also in deep gloom.

This is a well-meaning stopgap on the way to the ambitious October exhibition, Amazon to Caribbean: Early Peoples of the Rainforest, and the imminent launch of a website featuring the stored textiles, plus audiovisual sites in the Textile Gallery area.

All these will naturally generate more interest, and therefore sustainable access. Go to Forest Hill now to enjoy the museum as a whole; and if you want to see the Yoruba textiles, take a torch.

Laura Drysdale is a writer and consultant