About the Museum
A curator's answer to the glass case
Established in 1997, Tanji Village Museum — often spelled Tanje — holds the distinction of being The Gambia's first privately owned and operated cultural museum. It was founded by Mr. Abdoulie Bayo, a former curator of the National Museum in Banjul, with the aim of preserving and showcasing traditional Gambian lifestyles, natural history and local craftsmanship.
The living museum idea
Having spent years working with a national collection, Bayo built something deliberately unlike it. The museum is structured as a traditional West African village hamlet: visitors walk through a series of authentically constructed round mud huts with thatched roofs, each serving a distinct educational or cultural purpose.
The result is an immersive alternative to static galleries — a place where a grinding stone sits where a grinding stone would have sat, and where the person who wove the cloth may be at the loom a few metres away.
Before 1997
Abdoulie Bayo serves as curator of the National Museum in Banjul, working with the national collection and its conventional gallery displays.
1997
The Tanji Village Museum opens along the Kombo Coastal Road — the first privately owned and operated cultural museum in The Gambia.
The concept
Rather than glass cases, the museum is built as a working village hamlet, so visitors experience objects in the settings they belonged to.
Since then
Artisans, musicians and guides have joined the grounds, and the surrounding woodland has been preserved as part of the museum's remit.
Where to go next
The Compound
The reconstructed Mandinka family compound at the heart of the grounds.
Exhibits
The ethnographic collection and the musical gallery.
Visit & Stay
Getting here, the bar, the craft shop and the eco-huts.