curators organized "focus" exhibitions centered around a single object from the collection. The museum hosted outside curators and traveling exhibitions. Its shows became more ambitious as its museum relations and budget grew. At the opening of the National Mall building, the museum showed 375 works in five small- and mid-sized exhibits with survey and single-theme scopes. The central exhibit, "African Art in the Cycle of Life", exhibited 88 items in seven sections following seven phases of African tribal life to provide social context for their use. For example, sections such as "Continuity" displayed hand-carved maternity figures, "Transition" displayed coming-of-age ceremonial masks, and "Towards a Secure World" displayed priest and healer items. Many of the pieces were masterpieces borrowed from American and European museums and private collections. Another exhibit showed 100 items from the museum's collection. The remaining three exhibits were smaller: West African textiles, Benin sculptures, and copper reliefs, and useful objects like baskets, hairpins, and snuff boxes. The exhibitions were chosen to confront stereotypes of African art as overly "expressive, ritualistic, and ... undocumented", and instead show perspectives overlooked in Western views on African art. During the Walker yearsthe late '90s and early 2000sthe museum hosted shows on Egyptian contemporary art and Malagasy textiles. A 1997 gift from photographer Constance Stuart Larrabee led to an in-house and traveling exhibition. Walker organized a 1998 retrospective of Yoruba sculptor Olowe of Ise, a rare example of a single-person African art show. The exhibition's accompanying catalogue raisonne was the first such scholarly publication for a traditional African artist. The museum has also held solo exhibitions for artists including Sokari Douglas Camp (1989) and Yinka Shonibare (2010). Exhibitions aimed towards children, such as "Playful Performers", drew crowds under Patton's directorship in the mid-2000s, as did "Treasures" shows from the museum's collection and artist visits. A 2004 show, "Insights", highlighted 30 works about Apartheid South Africa from its collection. In 2013, the museum received its largest gift, $1.8 million from Oman, towards a series that focuses on arts from the country and its links to cultures in the Near East. The 2015 "Conversations: African and African-American Artworks in Dialogue", featuring works from the private collection of Bill and Camille Cosby, became controversial for opening just as allegations of sexual assault against him became public. The museum's director had a long friendship with the CosbysCamille also sat on the museum's advisory board. The exhibition was