The Bahamas Museum of Junkanoo

The Bahamas Museum of Junkanoo occupies a colorful, two-story building on the edge of downtown Nassau. It houses elaborate cardboard and crepe paper costumes saved from decades of Junkanoo parades. These suits, some reaching twelve feet in height, are designed for a single night of intense movement before they fall apart. Arley Smith, a legendary Junkanoo artist, kept these fragile pieces from the trash to prove the craft required as much precision as any traditional sculpture. He died shortly after the museum opened.