The Africa Center, formerly known as the Museum for African Art and before that as the Center for African Art, is a museum located at

Fifth Avenue Fifth Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the borough (New York City), borough of Manhattan in New York City. The avenue runs south from 143rd Street (Manhattan), West 143rd Street in Harlem to Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. The se ...

and 110th Street in

East Harlem East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem, or , is a neighborhood of Upper Manhattan in New York City, north of the Upper East Side and bounded by 96th Street to the south, Fifth Avenue to the west, and the East and Harlem Rivers to the eas ...

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

, near the northern end of Fifth Avenue's Museum Mile. Founded in 1984, the museum is "dedicated to increasing public understanding and appreciation of

African art African art encompasses modern and historical paintings, sculptures, installations, and other visual cultures originating from indigenous African diaspora, African communities across the African continent. The definition may also include the ar ...

and culture." The Museum is also well known for its public

education Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education als ...

programs that help raise awareness of

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

n culture, and also operates a unique store selling authentic handmade African

crafts A craft or trade is a pastime or an occupation that requires particular skills and knowledge of skilled work. In a historical sense, particularly the Middle Ages and earlier, the term is usually applied to people occupied in small scale pr ...

. 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

Holland Cotter wrote in 2010 about what is now the Africa Center, "In the 1980s and '90s it revolutionized the way art, any art, could be exhibited. No one else has fully picked up that challenge since. Maybe the museum itself, under wraps the last few years, can do so again."

1984–1993: Early years

What is now the Africa Center was opened as the Center for African Art in September 1984 by its founding director, Susan Mullin Vogel, who had previously worked as Associate Curator in the "Department of Primitive Art" at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

. The center's original location was on the

Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the boroughs of New York City, borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded approximately by 96th Street (Manhattan), 96th Street to the north, the East River to the e ...

, in "a pair of converted town houses at 54 East 68th Street." As director, 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. Based largely on Vogel's earlier exhibitions, Roberta Smith wrote in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' in 1989 that the 1980s "may also come to be seen as the beginning of the golden age of African art exhibitions."

1993–2002: SoHo

In February 1993, the institution changed its name to the Museum for African Art and moved to a three-times larger space at 593 Broadway in

Soho SoHo, short for "South of Houston Street, Houston Street", is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood has been the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, art installations such as The Wall ...

, that was designed by the architect and artist Maya Lin and described by New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp as "a flowing sequence of galleries, unfolding on two floors," in which Lin "uses subtle gradations of color to suggest a passage through time as well as space." After founding director Vogel was named director of the Yale University Art Gallery in 1994, Grace C. Stanislaus was named as executive director in February 1995. Elsie McCabe (later Elsie McCabe Thompson) led the institution from 1997 until she resigned in 2012. When McCabe took over, she "set her sights on moving the tiny museum and collection" from Soho to uptown Manhattan, saying (ironically given that she moved the museum to its third and fourth locations), "A museum is very much an edifice, and you can't attract a loyal and dedicated audience if you're constantly on the move."

2002–2006: Long Island City

In September 2002, the museum moved to its third location, at 36–01 43rd Avenue, third floor, in

Long Island City Long Island City (LIC) is a neighborhood within the New York City borough of Queens. It is bordered by Astoria to the north; the East River to the west; Sunnyside to the east; and Newtown Creek, which separates Queens from Greenpoint, Brook ...

Queens Queens is the largest by area of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located near the western end of Long Island, it is bordered by the ...

, intended as "an interim home before a permanent move to 110th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan," a site that in 2002 was expected to be ready "within four years or so." 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 The Carnegie Corporation of New York is a philanthropic fund established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to support education programs across the United States, and later the world. Since its founding, the Carnegie Corporation has endowed or othe ...

, which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor

Michael Bloomberg Michael Rubens Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) is an American businessman and politician. He is the majority owner and co-founder of Bloomberg L.P., and was its CEO from 1981 to 2001 and again from 2014 to 2023. He served as the 108th mayo ...

. The Museum closed its public gallery in Queens in 2006, and in 2013 the board changed its name to the New Africa Center, which later became the Africa Center, and changed its intended purpose from art museum to "a clearinghouse and public policy institute for all things Africa." After several years of delayed openings, and the realization that the initial goal of a museum on Fifth Avenue was not sustainable, the decision was made to broaden the project's scope, and push back the opening to 2015. The new building would be on Museum Mile at the corner of

and East 110th Street in

2006–present: Museum Mile

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 was to serve as a cultural center, modeling itself after the

Asia Society The Asia Society is a 501(c)(3) organization that focuses on educating the world about Asia. It has several centers in the United States (Manhattan, Washington, D.C., Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle) and around the world (Hong Ko ...

and other similar organizations. The new building's aim was to 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 would encompass approximately with of exhibition space, as well as a theater, education center, library, classrooms, event space, restaurant and gift shop. The growth into the cultural center was spearheaded by, CEO Uzodinma Iweala and board members

Chelsea Clinton Chelsea Victoria Clinton (born February 27, 1980) is an American writer. She is the only child of former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. Secretary of State and U.S. Senator. Clinton was born in Little Rock, Ar ...

, Halima Dangote, and Hadeel Ibrahim daughter of Mo Ibrahim. While the outer-shell of the building was completed in 2010, critical interior build-out and occupation was delayed by stalled fundraising efforts and leadership transitions. In 2015, the Africa Center hired Michelle D. Gavin, former United States Ambassador to Botswana and an expert on Africa, as its managing director. Gavin left in late 2016. In the interim, the Africa Center was to present pop up events in its new space until the building is completed. In February 2019, Terenga, a West African fast-casual restaurant, opened in the Africa Center space. Martin Kimani was appointed President and CEO in 2025. The Africa Center also hosts a Shared Studios Portal, which connects the center live and in real-time to communities around the world. The majority of their Portal connections are to sites on the African continent.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Africa Center, The Art museums and galleries established in 1984 African art museums in the United States African-American museums in New York City Museums in Manhattan Art museums and galleries in Manhattan 1984 establishments in New York City Proposed museums in the United States Fifth Avenue East Harlem Proposed buildings and structures in New York City Museums in Queens, New York Art in Harlem Buildings and structures in Harlem