22 April - May 2008

United Nations Headquarters, New York City

First Avenue at 46th Street, Main Gallery of the Visitors' Lobby

Hours: Mon-Fri, 9 to 5 pm, Sat & Sun, 10-5 pm.

Open to the public, free of charge.

The popular board game known as mancala is found all over Africa, although no one knows for sure where it originated. Due to centuries of trade connecting continents, the game is also found on the Indian sub-continent, in Asia, and in the Americas. For centuries, adults and children all over Africa have played mancala for fun and in serious competitions. In societies with rich sculptural traditions, mancala boards are often embellished with decorative carvings evoking kings, deities, and idealized images of the human form. Historically, the boards have played a role in the accession of kings, funerary and divination rites, and celebrations. The boards in ARTWORK/ARTPLAY: African Game Boards demonstrate some of the local variations of a game that is also an art form.

This exhibition is part of an international photographic and art exhibition by and about indigenous artists coinciding with the 7th session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues taking place at UN Headquarters in New York.

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.

A collaboration between the Museum for African Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art, Resonance from the Past: African Sculpture from the New Orleans Museum of Art consists of approximately 100 works of art including masks, figures, musical instruments, ceramics, and fabric and beadwork costumes chosen from the extensive collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Artists at Ife, the ancient capital of the Yoruba people, created a unique sculptural corpus that ranks among Africa's and the world's most aesthetically striking and technically sophisticated. Dynasty and Divinity: Ife in Ancient Nigeria is organized by the Museum for African Art in collaboration with the Fundacion Marcelino Botin of Santander, Spain.

Star of the 52nd Venice Biennale, the Ghanaian born Anatsui is one of the most sought after artists in contemporary art today. El Anatsui: "The Last Time I 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.

Opening at the Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC, on 29 August 2008 through 30 November 2008: 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.