On view at the Pei Ling Chan Gallery and Garden for the Arts of the Savannah College of Art and Design from May 11, 2009 through July 10, 2009. Organized by the Museum for African Art, Desert Jewels features approximately eighty examples of exquisite North African jewelry and nearly thirty original photographs taken in Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
 
Collected over three decades by Xavier Guerrand-Hermès, this unique collection reveals the astonishing power of traditional North African jewelry design. Crafted from silver and semiprecious stones, the jewelry, from simple ornaments that would be worn by a child to elaborate necklaces for women of wealth, illustrates the cultural diversity as well as the common themes that run through North African societies. The photographs in the exhibition depict the daily life of North African people as well as the breathtaking landscapes and archeological monuments that caught the attention of Westerners at the time. These images are by the period's most prominent photographers including Scotsman George Washington Wilson, the Neurdein brothers from France, and Turkish photographer Pascal Sabah.

The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) and the Museum for African Art are proud to present Perspectives: Women, Art and Islam, an exhibition of five female artists whose major connection is their personal relationship with Islam.

A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art features Congolese urban art, or popular painting, that portrays the life and tragic death of Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of the Congo after its independence from Belgium in 1960. A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art is available for travel.

In Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art the humble but beautifully crafted coiled basket, made in Africa and in the southern United States, becomes a prism through which audiences learn about the artistry characteristic of Africans in America from the 17th century to the present.

Next on view at the Fowler Museum at UCLA in Los Angeles, CA from October 4, 2009 and continuing through January 10, 2010.  Grass Roots will open in New York in 2010 as one of the inaugural exhibitions at the Museum for African Art's new building in Harlem. Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art is available for travel.

Image: Egg basket, Elizabeth Mazyck, Courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, 26/1065

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.

Star of the 52nd Venice Biennale, the Ghanaian born Anatsui is one of the most sought after artists in contemporary art today. El Anatsui: "When I Last Wrote to You About Africa" is the first comprehensive retrospective of El Anatsui, one of Africa's most acclaimed sculptors.

In Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art the humble but beautifully crafted coiled basket, made in Africa and in the southern United States, becomes a prism through which audiences learn about the artistry characteristic of Africans in America from the 17th century to the present.

On view at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center from February 5, 2009 and continuing through April 20, 2009.  Grass Roots will open in New York in 2010 as one of the inaugural exhibitions at the Museum for African Art's new building in Harlem. Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art is available for travel.

Image: Egg basket, Elizabeth Mazyck, Courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, 26/1065

Sudanese artist Ibrahim El Salahi's work merges Western preoccupations with the history of representation with his aesthetic concerns as a practicing Muslim. The first museum retrospective of this important African modernist spans the period from his early training in London to his return to Sudan and later residencies in Egypt.