El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa brings together the full range of El Anatsui’s work, from wood trays made in Ghana referencing traditional Akan symbols, early ceramics from the Broken Pots series, through chainsaw-carved wood, to his most recent luminous metal sculptures and wall hangings. Anatsui has gained international acclaim for his dazzling metallic hangings made from liquor bottle caps. In these sculptures, as in wood and ceramics, Anatsui pieces together monumental visual statements that refer to global, local, and personal histories.

Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art presents the remarkable beauty of coiled basketry and demonstrates how the utilitarian rice fanner and market basket can be viewed simultaneously as objects of use, containers of memory, and works of art. The exhibition features 225 objects including baskets from the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia and from diverse regions of Africa, as well as African sculpture from the rice-growing societies which, through the agency of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, exported their cultures to America.  

New Premises: Three Decades at the Museum for African Art, an institutional retrospective, will reflect on the Museum’s rich exhibition history since its founding in 1984. Rather than a simple review of exhibitions to date, the show will present surprising juxtapositions of objects, examining the ways in which the Museum has expanded the definition of African art to include not only historical masterpieces but also contemporary performance art, photography, design, puppetry, and the art of the everyday.