As the museum moved to the National Mall in the mid 1980s, its permanent collection consisted of more than 6,000 art objects (e.g., sculpture, artifacts, textiles) and the large Elisofon photography collection. This original collection focused on Sub-Saharan Africa, with better representation of the Guinea coast and Western Sudan than the Central African region. The collection is idiosyncratic, reflecting the relative lack of colonial era African art acquisitions in American donor collections. Some early highlights of the museum's collection include an Edo–Portuguese ivory spoon and an Akan gold pendant bequeathed by the Robert Woods Bliss estate. The museum's first acquisitions budget came with joining the Smithsonian.