MORE EVENTSNEWS
Smithsonian Blog--Remembering "The Beautiful Time" at the Natural History Museum
In Sammy Baloji’s native Congo, the mid-20th century is wistfully remembered as la belle époque, or the beautiful time. This brief moment of universal prosperity is memorialized in “The Beautiful Time: Photography by Sammy Baloji,” now on view at the Natural History Museum.
Glasstire Texas--"El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You About Africa" at The Blanton Museum of Art
The retrospective exhibition, When I Last Wrote to You About Africa at The Blanton Museum of Art in Austin is an extraordinary glimpse at the breadth of El Anatsui’s work since the mid-1970s, long before he brilliantly began stitching bottle tops together in 2002. The selection of work and extremely well executed installation at The Blanton reintroduces an artist many of us might think we already know.
The Wall Street Journal--Globetrotter's Goal: Extend New York's Museum Mile
Mannie Jackson, who was born in a boxcar and went on to travel the world as owner of the Harlem Globetrotters, has given $5 million to the Museum for African Art for its new Fifth Avenue building, scheduled to open in late 2012.
Time Out New York--Three New NYC Museums
Museum Mile will get a bit longer later this year when the Museum for African Art, previously housed in Long Island City, opens in a 90,000-square-foot space near Central Park's north end.
The Austin Chronicle: The art of El Anatsui charts the geography of Africa from then to now
In addition to calling attention to Africa's past and how it's changed, Anatsui is reclaiming part of it for the continent's future, transforming the worn, the disposable, the discarded, and the junked into gleaming splendors.
Discussing the Importance of African Art: The Michael Eric Dyson Show
If we’re honest about it, most of us don’t know a lot about African art, other than the few masks and ivory tusks we’ve seen in museums that are otherwise more focused on European art. But Elsie McCabe Thompson is out to change that.
Transcript: A Conversation With El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa
Lisa Binder in discussion with El Anatsui at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin.
Economist--African visions: New York's first purpose-built museum since the Guggenheim
The organisation aims to transform itself from being a mere museum to becoming an African cultural centre, bringing together under one roof 18 other Africa-themed organisations offering dance, theatre and music.
NEXT|AFTER|THIS review of El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa
"...If you haven't seen his works in person I suggest you do in Austin before the time has past to experience this contemporary art as well as African history of El Anatsui's symbols and myths."
Elsie McCabe Thompson on "Conversations with Allan Wolper"
You can now listen to Elsie McCabe Thompson's interview on WBGO JAZZ 88.3FM's "Conversations with Allan Wolper."
Wall Street Journal--"Reaching High on Upper 5th Avenue"
The Museum's Deputy Director & Chief Operating Officer, Kenita Lloyd was quoted in The Wall Street Journal on Friday October 21, 2011.
Fall Benefit 2011 Photos!
The Museum's first annual Fall Benefit and Silent Auction was a wonderful success at the the Museum's new home at 1280 Fifth Avenue!
Blanton shows retrospective of El Anatsui's works
"...striking, cohesive works of art that touch on local, global and personal histories from his west African culture."
Just posted! Videos made by the Museum's Youth Ambassadors Interns.
The Youth Ambassadors Internship Program participated in a digital media workshop taught by Veralyn Williams, and these videos are the resultant work.
Indianapolis Business Journal: Ife sculptures at IMA paint a thousand words
"While the Europeans were cloak-deep in their medieval period, the Ife were creating remarkable sculptures in copper alloy and terra cotta. And more than 100 of these pieces are on display at the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s new show, “Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria.”
Nuvo: Dynasty and Divinity at IMA Review
"...delight in the wonderfully finished, elegant heads of royal personages, most often done in copper alloy; the terra-cotta models of animals and monsters, and primordial forms carved from granite."
Indianapolis Start Photo Gallery--Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria Exhibit Opens at IMA
Photos from yesterdays opening of Dynasty and Divinity at the Indianapolis Museum of Art
Time Out New York--Museum News
"Big things are happening at museums around town—get a preview of four institutions that’ll make megachanges in the next few years."
H-Net Reviews--El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa
The beautifully designed monograph, El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa, edited by Lisa M. Binder, assistant curator at the Museum for African Art, serves as the catalogue for an exhibit of the same name that she organized for the museum.
Artforum Critics' Pick--El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa
"...the US debut of Anatsui’s seminal touring retrospective dives deep past the artist’s culturally representative status and other ambassadorial shallows to illuminate four decades of rich, manifold graphic and sculptural work."
The Bay State Banner--A Different Kind of Letter from Africa
"one of the most memorable museum shows in Greater Boston this year."
Learn why Elsie McCabe Thompson just won the Ford Foundation Visionary Award in this wonderful video about the vision of the Museum for African Art.
The Museum for African Art is one of only two major American museums devoted solely to African art, and it was Elsie McCabe Thompson"s singular determination that made possible the opening of a high-profile showplace for the museum"s collection.
The Ford Foundation awards President Elsie McCabe Thompson prestigious Visionary Award.
Elsie McCabe Thompson, is president of the Museum for African Art, one of the award recipients. The institution plans to open a permanent building on Fifth Avenue between 109th and 110th streets.
"Dynasty and Divinity" at the VMFA offers a glimpse of an ancient world-Style Weekly
"...some of the most important works of West African art ever shown in the United States."
The Boston Phoenix--El Anatsui Shows Why He's One of the Best
"...El Anatsui's art embodies and broadcasts his homeland, its nostalgia and bad memories, its beauty and trash, its history and dreams."
The Boston Phoenix--Slideshow: 'El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa' at the Davis Museum
"El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa" | Davis Museum | March 30–June 12, 2011
Inquiry: LISA FISCHMAN and LISA BINDER: the artist EL ANATSUI | WICN Public Radio
Tonight on Inquiry, we welcome LISA FISCHMAN, Director of the Davis Museum at Wellesley College and LISA BINDER, Associate Curator at the Museum For African Art in New York. They will be discussing the exhibition EL ANATSUI: WHEN I LAST WROTE TO YOU ABOUT AFRICA at the Davis till June 26. El Anatsui is a contemporary artist, born in Ghana but now based in Nigeria. His works are often created from found objects that are re-purposed through his labor-intensive processes. Some of his pieces are on a monumental scale and are draped like huge sculptural tapestries. Other works are more intimate. His work comments on the cultural, historical and spiritual traditions of West Africa while also dealing with global issues like consumerism and colonialism. This is the first major retrospective of this important artists work. For information on directions to museum, when the museum is open and other exhibitions, please go to: https://www.davismuseum.wellesley.edu/
El Anatsui Teaser: Installation video of El Anatsui at the Davis Museum
Amazing video of the installation of El Anatsui at the Davis Museum at Wellesley.
Richmond Times-Dispatch--African past, U.S. future for Armstrong students
"...using African art — particularly VMFA's groundbreaking exhibit "Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria" — as a means of broadening the students' view of what leadership means."
Washington Post review of Dynasty & Divinity by Jason Edward Kaufman
"The sculpture of Ife changes ideas about African art...It's a game changer and is not to be missed."
NYTimes--Museum for African Art received $3 million gift from Ford Foundation
The Museum for African Art in New York has received a $3 million gift from the Ford Foundation toward the completion of its new home on Fifth Avenue, at 110th Street, which is scheduled to open in the fall, the museum said on Tuesday.
RVANews--Dynasty & Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria
The works, "seem to speak with a voiceless, haunting quality that must be experienced to be understood."
NY Daily News--"How the Museum for African Art will change the uptown landscape"
"...the Museum for African Art at 1280 Fifth Ave. is a blessed building."
Richmond Magazine--Dynasty & Divinity
"... is a splendid exhibition of an art and people about whom we need to know more. Richmond is fortunate to have attained a slot in the six-city tour of the show and is the only place other than New York City where it will be seen on the East Coast."
New York Magazine Guides--The New New Harlem
The 75,000-square-foot space debuts with a trio of exhibits including “Grass Roots,” which compares coiled baskets made in Africa and the American South. Until then, the museum is operating in a temporary space in Long Island City.
Imagining Africa: El Anatsui brings his metal tapestries to ROM
He turns the public into time-travelling tourists; in El Anatsui's adept hands, the present and future can be faced with renewed optimism.
Chicago Tribune--The pluralist: Robert A.M. Stern wins the Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture
Congratulations to our architect Robert Stern on this prestigious award!
Voice of America--Nigerian Ife Art on Display in Houston
"A collection of more than 100 items of African art is now on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the first stop in a U.S. tour of rare art works from Nigeria's Ife region."
NOW Magazine-Message in a Bottle Cap (Anatsui review)
NOW magazine--"A vivid visual pleasure, those draped, large-scale bottle-cap “tapestries” – there are lots of them here – reference West African textile traditions and the continent’s creative reuse of metal, as well as commenting on the role of the liquor trade in colonialism."
Houston Press Capsule Review of Dynasty and Divinity
This is a wonderful show and a coup for the museum.
America.gov--Grass Roots review
Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art, an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, tells the story of the coiled sweetgrass baskets made by the Gullah/Geechee people of the southeastern United States — descendants of slaves brought from Africa 300 years ago.
Canadian Art--El Anatsui: Reshaping the Everyday
"...what comes across is Anatsui’s ability to animate, transform and reshape the everyday."
myETVmedia's Introduction to El Anatsui
African artist and sculptor, El Anatsui, premieres his 40 year career retrospective at the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto, Canada and myETVmedia is there to revel in the beauty of his extraordinary pieces made up of found and recycled materials discarded by humans.
Houston Press--Faces of Ife
It not only feels like a crowd, it is crowded. "Dynasty and Divinity" is a wonderful show and a coup for the museum.
The Star--Life's shimmering jigsaw puzzle
The currant in my life’s cake is the gleaming El Anatsui curtains currently on show at the ROM, made of flattened liquor bottle caps that look like fish scales on a skin that ripples across the walls. Pure beauty.
Toronto Life--The One Thing You Should See This Week-El Anatsui at the ROM
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, especially for El Anatsui. When the Ghanaian artist came across a bag of discarded liquor bottle tops in 2002, the fortuitous discovery enriched an already fertile body of work by drawing a direct connection between Anatsui’s materials, his art and his people’s history.
The Link Radio Network--Excellent Piece about El Anatsui
On the Link today we look at the work of Ghanaian visual artist El Anatsui who turns junk into awe-inspiring sculptures.
Majesty, serenity and suffering from Ife's golden age on Next.com
When the German explorer Leo Frobenius went on an expedition to West Africa 100 years ago and discovered beautiful terracotta sculptures and brass heads from Ife, he thought he had found Plato's lost city of Atlantis.
The Globe and Mail--El Anatsui's shimmering echoes of a painful past
El Anatsui thinks it’s apt that Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum is the premiere venue for a major retrospective of his work that will be touring North America over the next three years.
The Star--El Anatsui: finding the meaning of junk
Artist with new ROM show can turn almost anything into engaging works
El Anatsui Offers A Golden Getaway at the ROM--Torontoist
As we dive into autumn and find our days getting shorter and darker, you may find yourself in need of a warm and golden presence. Luckily, the ROM's new exhibition is the antidote to gloom.
Faces of kings: Get in a staredown with ancient African art in a MFAH U.S. first
Some art you look at. Some art looks back at you.
Ife art wows the United States on Next
After successful showings in Spain and Britain, the touring exhibition, ‘Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria', has berthed in the US.
El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa - October 2, 2010 - January 2, 2011
The exhibition is a 40-year career retrospective of Ghanaian visual artist El Anatsui and will be his first solo exhibition in Canada.
Wall Street Journal--A Royal Head in a New Exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston
"Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria" displays cooper busts enearthed in 1938.
The Curated Object: Desert Jewels at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
The rich array of baubles, bangles, and beads on display here may contain precious few precious stones, but their wealth (both monetarily and culturally) is undeniable.
Grass Roots review by NEA Intern on arts.gov
In the Grass Roots exhibit, Mary Jackson’s extraordinary baskets take their place among several generations of equally ambitious and time consuming designs. Each takes time and patience to create, from the cutting and peeling of the grass blades to the intricate twisting, tucking and weaving of the leaves. The result is a patterned and often multi-colored assemblage combining durability and design: a rice fanner, a fruit basket, a hat.
Houston Chronicle Review: Amazing realism of Ife
Ancient Nigerian city's treasures reveal sophistication in U.S. debut.
Culturemap.com--Opening of "Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria"
No other exhibition could give justice to the newly reinstalled African galleries at the MFAH like this show, the U.S. debut of more than 100 extraordinary copper, terra cotta and stone sculptures that were uncovered in the 1910s and 1930s in present-day Southwest Nigeria.
Photos of Museum event at Saks on essence.com!
At Saks Fifth Avenue for the Museum for African Art evening of art and shopping.
Artnet.com--Ife as one of "Top Twenty Shows" in U.S. Museums
Sophisticated brass, terra-cotta and stone sculptures -- 100 in all -- ranging in date from the ninth to the 15th centuries, in a show organized by the Museum for African Art, New York, and the Fundación Marcelino Botín, Santander, Spain, in collaboration with the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments
MFA Houston Hosts U.S. Debut of the Critically Acclaimed Exhibition "Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria"
100 Masterful Sculptures Illuminate Legendary Ancient Kingdom
Jewels of North Africa--The Jewelry Loupe
Xavier Guerrand-Hermès, a director of the Paris-based fashion empire, spent three decades collecting North African jewelry and photography, and the creme of his collection is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The Afro News--El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa
World Premiere of Contemporary African Artist’s Work at the ROM
Economist article about Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria
Magnificent Mysteries: Ancient West African treasures embark on a journey round America
Artdaily.org--Desert Jewels at Philadelphia Museum of Art
For thousands of years, North Africa, a region that comprises the modern nations of Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Egypt, has been a crossroads for trade and the transmission of cultural influences from the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. This exhibition explores the richly diverse artistic heritage of North Africa through the presentation of a group of extraordinary works of the jeweler’s art collected over the course of three decades by Xavier Guerrand-Hermès, of the Paris-based fashion empire. Including 93 pieces of jewelry complemented by 28 late 19th- and early 20th-century images by photographers who were captivated by the allure of North Africa, Desert Jewels (September 4 – December 5, 2010) features ornate necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings, many of which have not been publicly displayed before this exhibition.
NYTimes Article, "Pulling Museum Mile Uptown"
Mrs. Thompson is preparing to open the museum’s new $95 million home on upper Fifth Avenue next spring.
Ife Exhibition Press after London Opening
Dynasty and Divnity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria also known as Kingdom of Ife: Sculptures from West Africa has been getting phenominal reviews after its opening at the British Museum in London.
NEA grants Museum $50,000 for Dogon Now: Masks in Motion
This grant was awarded to support the touring exhibition Dogon Now: Masks in Motion, with accompanying catalogue and education programs. The exhibition will present and interpret the evolution of Dogon (Mali) mask dancers and sculpture that have, over the years, assimilated modernity into traditional forms.
NEH awards Museum its second $500,000 Construction Grant
The NEH just announced its second $500,000 grant to the Museum for "direct costs of fit-out of newly constructed Museum for African Art building."
Ife--One of Telegraph.co.uk's "Key art exhibitions of 2010"
Ife is "potentially the exhibition of the year" says Richard Dormant of Telegraph.co.uk. The Museum's Ife exhibition opens at the British Museum in March.
Video of The Pervasive Echo by Ruth Sacks, Presented by the Museum for African Art
A re-examination of the 19th-century pehnomenon that was Jenny Lind, a singer also known as the "the Swedish Nightingale," in which a fragment of Lind's inaugural concert in America was restaged under unusual circumstances at the same site where she gave this historic concert 159 years ago. Presented by the Museum for African Art.
New York Times Profile of Museum President Elsie McCabe Thompson
New York Times reporter Fernanda Santos writes a profile about Museum's President Elsie McCabe Thompson as the wife of mayoral candidate, Bill Thompson.
Empire BlueCross BlueShield Launches "Art Heals" Program with Museum for African Art, Greater New York Hospital Association
Empire BlueCross BlueShield, The Museum for African Art, and the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA) present “Art Heals,” a unique program that will bring African art to nearly 100 New York hospitals this fall.
NEH grants Museum $350,000 for Dogon Now: Masks in Motion
The National Endowment of the Humanities has granted the Museum for African Art a $350,000 Implementation Grant for Dogon Now: Masks in Motion. This exhibition will bring over 100 objects together to bring to life the performative experience of Dogon masquerade as a living and dynamic tradition that continues to evolve at the turn of the 21st century. It will open at the Museum's new home on Museum Mile in 2012.
Dynasty and Divinity--International Press
UPDATED--8.12.09 Dynasty and Divninty: Ife in Ancient Nigeria continues to receive press in North America, Europe and Africa while it finishes its time in Santander and prepares to open in Madrid in September.
Immigrants: Africans in New York online publication now available!
The groundbreaking symposium Immigrants: Africans in New York is now available, in part, to Museum for African Art website users.
Celebrate Congo! Workshops presented by the Museum for African Art and Wildlife Conservation Society/Bronx Zoo
The Bronx Zoo hosts ten days of art workshops in collaboration withthe Museum for African Art.
Major Exhibition Illuminates Culture and Civilization of Ife, Ancient African City-State
Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria, a landmark exhibition devoted to the art of Ife, the ancient city-state of the Yoruba people of West Africa (in present-day southwestern Nigeria), begins its international tour at the Fundación Marcelino Botín, in Santander, Spain, on June 17, 2009.
Spring 2009 Gala Photos!
The Museum's 25th anniversary annual silent auction and benefit dinner was a wonderful success at Guastavino's this year!
El Anatsui featured in New York Times T Magazine
Today Alexi Worth of the New York Times published an article entitled "A Thousand Bottles" about El Anatsui in the Style Section. You can read it here. The Museum for African Art is presenting the restrospective El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa as one of its inaugural exhibitions in its new building.
NEA grants Museum $100,000 for El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You About Africa
On November 28, 2008, the Museum for African Art was awarded a grant of $100,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts to partially support its upcoming retrospective exhibition of the work of Ghanaian-born sculptor El Anatsui, with an accompanying catalogue.
Two Popular Lecture Series Receive Additional Funding
In August, New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) awarded the Museum’s two popular lecture series, Time Lines: New Perspectives on Contemporary and Traditional African Art and Conversations with a Continent, $5,000 for the continuation of these programs. This is NYSCA’s second year supporting these series.
El Anatsui Exhibition Receives Support from Warhol and NYSCA
The Museum for African Art recently received support for its highly anticipated inaugural exhibition, El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You About Africa, which is set to debut in the Museum’s new building on Museum Mile.
PRESS RELEASE: Desert Jewels
Desert Jewels: North African Jewelry and Photography from the Xavier Guerrand-Hermès Collection
An exhibition of spectacular jewelry and historic photographs from the North African nations of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia opens to the public on October 10 at the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. Desert Jewels: North African Jewelry and Photography from the Xavier Guerrand-Hermès Collection presents approximately 80 never before exhibited pieces of stunning North African jewelry and 27 late 19th- and early 20th-century photographs by some of the period’s most prominent photographers. Desert Jewels is organized by the Museum for African Art in New York and is sponsored by Merrill Lynch.
PRESS RELEASE: Grass Roots
Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art, a highly anticipated exhibition created by the Museum for African Art in New York, opens on August 29, 2008 at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina, and runs through November 30, 2008. Through the story of the beautiful coiled basket, Grass Roots revisits the history of the southeastern United States and demonstrates the enduring contribution of African people and culture to American life. Featuring over two hundred objects, including baskets made in Africa and the American South, African sculptures, paintings from the Charleston Renaissance, historic photography, and new video, the exhibition follows the history of the coiled basket on two continents and shows how a simple farm tool once used for processing rice has become a work of art and an important symbol of African-American identity.
Awarded $100,000 from MetLife Foundation
The Museum for African Art is honored to have been awarded a grant at the $100,000 level.