Museum for African Art
Encyclopedia
The Museum for African Art is located in the neighborhood of Long Island City in the borough of Queens
in New York City
, United States
. Founded in 1984, the museum
is "dedicated to increasing public understanding and appreciation of African art
and culture." The Museum is also well known for its public education
programs that help raise awareness of Africa
n culture, and also operates a unique store selling authentic hand-made African crafts
.
The Museum has organized nearly 60 critically acclaimed exhibitions and traveled these to almost 140 venues nationally and internationally, including 15 other countries. Forty of these exhibitions are accompanied by scholarly catalogues.
In 2005, the museum was among 406 New York City
arts and social service institutions to receive part of a $20 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation, which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg
. http://web.archive.org/web/20080511134218/http://www.carnegie.org/sub/news/anon2005.html
This site is often confused with the National Museum of African Art
in Washington, DC.
at the corner of Fifth Avenue and E. 110th Street in the borough of Manhattan
, in the neighborhood of Harlem
. The new location, in a building designed by architect Robert A.M. Stern, is the first museum building built on New York's Museum Mile since the completion of the Guggenheim in 1959. It will make the museum accessible to a wide range of people from the world over, thus solidifying the museum's presence as one of the most challenging and diverse art institutions in the U.S.
The new building will encompass approximately 90000 square feet (8,361.3 m²) with 16000 square feet (1,486.4 m²) of exhibition space, as well as a theater, education center, library, classrooms, event space, restaurant and gift shop.
Queens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Founded in 1984, the museum
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...
is "dedicated to increasing public understanding and appreciation of African art
African art
African art constitutes one of the most diverse legacies on earth. Though many casual observers tend to generalize "traditional" African art, the continent is full of people, societies, and civilizations, each with a unique visual special culture. The definition also includes the art of the African...
and culture." The Museum is also well known for its public education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
programs that help raise awareness of Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n culture, and also operates a unique store selling authentic hand-made African crafts
Arts and crafts
Arts and crafts comprise a whole host of activities and hobbies that are related to making things with one's hands and skill. These can be sub-divided into handicrafts or "traditional crafts" and "the rest"...
.
The Museum has organized nearly 60 critically acclaimed exhibitions and traveled these to almost 140 venues nationally and internationally, including 15 other countries. Forty of these exhibitions are accompanied by scholarly catalogues.
History
Begun as the Center for African Art, the Museum for African Art's founding director was Susan Mullin Vogel, who had previously worked as Associate Curator in the Department of Primitive Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. During her time at the Museum for African Art, Vogel curated and organized ground-breaking exhibitions which put into question ways in which African art is presented to Western audiences, and how museum practices structure knowledge for the public. The most well-known of these exhibitions are "Art/Artifact: African Art in Anthropology Collections" in 1988, "Exhibition-ism: Museums and African Art" in 1994, and "Africa Explores: 20th-Century African Art" in 1991.In 2005, the museum was among 406 New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
arts and social service institutions to receive part of a $20 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation, which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg
Michael Bloomberg
Michael Rubens Bloomberg is the current Mayor of New York City. With a net worth of $19.5 billion in 2011, he is also the 12th-richest person in the United States...
. http://web.archive.org/web/20080511134218/http://www.carnegie.org/sub/news/anon2005.html
This site is often confused with the National Museum of African Art
National Museum of African Art
The National Museum of African Art is a museum that is part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.. Located on the National Mall, the museum specializes in African art and culture...
in Washington, DC.
Move and expansion
The museum will be moving in 2012 to its permanent new home http://www.africanart.org/about/ on Museum MileMuseum Mile, New York City
Museum Mile is the name for a section of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in the city of New York, in the United States, running from 82nd to 104th streets on the Upper East Side in a neighborhood known as Carnegie Hill. The "mile", which contains one of the densest displays of culture in the world, is...
at the corner of Fifth Avenue and E. 110th Street in the borough of Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, in the neighborhood of Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
. The new location, in a building designed by architect Robert A.M. Stern, is the first museum building built on New York's Museum Mile since the completion of the Guggenheim in 1959. It will make the museum accessible to a wide range of people from the world over, thus solidifying the museum's presence as one of the most challenging and diverse art institutions in the U.S.
The new building will encompass approximately 90000 square feet (8,361.3 m²) with 16000 square feet (1,486.4 m²) of exhibition space, as well as a theater, education center, library, classrooms, event space, restaurant and gift shop.
Exhibitions
The Museum for African Art has organized over 50 exhibitions that have been shown in New York and around the world. Exhibitions that have been organized or co-organized by the Museum:- African Masterpieces from the Musée de l'Homme (1984)
- Set, Series and Ensembles in African Art (1985)
- Arts of the Guro of Ivory Coast (1986)
- African Aesthetics: The Carlo Monzino Collection (1986)
- African Masterpieces from Munich: The Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde (1987)
- Perspectives: Angles on African Art (1988)
- ART/artifact: African Art in Anthropology Collections (1988)
- The Art of Collecting African Art (1988)
- Africa and the Renaissance: Art in Ivory (1989)
- Wild Spirits Strong Medicine: African Art and the Wilderness (1989)
- Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought (1990)
- Likeness and Beyond: Portraits from Africa and the World (1990)
- Closeup: Lessons in the Art of Seeing African Sculpture (1991)
- Africa Explores: 20th Century African Art (1992)
- Secrecy: African Art That Reveals and Conceals (1993)
- Home and the World: Architectural Sculpture by Two Contemporary African Artists (Aboudramane and Bodys Isek Kingelez (1993)
- Face of the Gods: Art and Altars of Africa and the African Americas (1994)
- Fusion: West African Artists at the Venice Biennale (1994)
- Outside Museum Walls: African Art in Private Collections (1994)
- Western Artist/African Art (1994)
- Exhibition-ism: Museums and African Art (1995)
- Artists and Ancestors in African Art (1995)
- Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History (1996)
- Art of the Baga: A Drama of Cultural Reinvention (1997)
- Art That Heals: The Image as Medicine in Ethiopia (1997)
- To Cure and Protect: Sickness and Health in African Art (1997)
- African Faces, African Figures: The Arman Collection (1998)
- Baule: African Art/Western Eyes (1999)
- A Sense of Wonder: African Art from the Faletti Family Collection (1999)
- A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art (1999)
- Liberated Voices: Contemporary Art from South Africa (2000)
- Hair in African Art and Culture (2000)
- In the Presence of Spirits: Selections from the National Museum of Ethnology, Lisbon (2000)
- African Forms (2001)
- Bamana: The Art of Existence in Mali (2002)
- Facing the Mask (2003)
- Recent Acquisitions: Selection from the Permanent Collection: Kingdom of Gold: A Photographic
- Celebration of Ghana (2002)
- Neger (Negro) – don’t call me (2003)
- Material Differences: Art and Identity in Africa (2003)
- Material Differences in Contemporary Art (2003)
- Looking Both Ways: Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora (2004)
- Where Gods and Mortals Meet: Continuity and Renewal in Urhobo Art (2004)
- Personal Affects: Power and Poetics in Contemporary South African Art (2005)
- Resonance from the Past: African Sculpture from the New Orleans Museum of Art (2005)
- Reflections: African Art Is… (2005)
- Lasting Foundations: The Art of Architecture in Africa (2006)
- At Arm’s Length: The Art of African Puppetry (2007)
- Daufuskie Island: Photographs by Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe (2007)
- Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art (2008)
- Desert Jewels: North African Jewelry and Photography from the Xavier Guerrand-Hermes Collection (2008)
- El Anatsui: Process and Project (2009)
- Dynasty and Divinity: Ife in Ancient Nigeria (2009)
- El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You About Africa (2010)
- The Beautiful Time: Photography by Sammy Baloji
- Jane Alexander: Surveys (from the Cape of Good Hope) (2011)