Striking Iron: The Art of African Blacksmiths is organized by the Fowler Museum at UCLA.
Through their journeys, struggles, and triumphs, exceptional individuals exemplify values that we celebrate in tales of heroic accomplishment. It was made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, promoting excellence in the humanities.
To view the status of the Smithsonian’s other museums and Zoo, visit si.edu/museums. Her aesthetic eye is apparent in the exquisite black-and-white images that document the lives of African peoples in both rural and urban settings. Offers may be subject to change without notice.
The exhibition considers the full range of Urhobo creativity, from personal images offering protection and advancement to communal shrine art. Numbers only. No single tradition or method unites these artists. A site-specific commission by the museum, Market Symphony draws on the commercial cries and urban ambiance of Balogun, a sprawling open-air market in Lagos, Africa’s largest and most populated city. These visual and tactile artworks play with the codex format in fanciful ways, pushing the boundaries with sheer unexpectedness. Batiste began drawing at the age of three, and he has become a world-renowned self-taught artist.
She was orphaned at the age of seven, and at the age of twenty, she became America’s first female self-made millionaire. During the early 1960s, a major artistic transformation occurred in Oshogbo, a Yoruba town in western Nigeria.
Artists’ Books and Africa is the first exhibition to focus on African artists books from the Smithsonian Libraries’ Warren M. Robbins Library and the National Museum of African Art. The exhibit shows occupation, skill, and property ownership of these free people.
This exhibition is a collaboration between the National Museum of African Art and the Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture. Drawing subject matter from billboard advertisements and popular media of 1950s Cairo, the artist creates nostalgic, whimsical, and at times, satirical commentaries on the strength of the visual in public culture. The borrower is liable for all costs relating to damages incurred during the leasing period. The installation by South African artist Sue Williamson commemorates District Six, a community in Cape Town, South Africa, that was razed under apartheid.
This site was designed by dezinsINTERACTIVE.
The exhibition focuses on the history and use of kente in Africa and explores contemporary kente and its manifestations. 1950) has been shooting black-and-white film for nearly a half-century. Cloth is considered the ultimate gift and plays a vital role in the social and economic lives of women and men in Madagascar. This 1863 document by President Lincoln effectively freed the slaves and ushered in a new era of U.S. history.
The African Art Museum of Maryland (AAMM), founded in 1980 as the first Museum in the planned community of Columbia, MD, is unique. The four-room cypress building is among America’s most endangered school buildings.
National Museum of African Art - Smithsonian Institution, Currently ‘online only’ due to COVID-19 restrictions. Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley presents a comprehensive view of the arts produced in the region and includes some of the most abstract, dramatic and inventive sculpture from sub-Saharan Africa.
features works by 11 visual artists from the earliest days of the Oshogbo school.
In diverse ways, they celebrate the marriage of aesthetic form and literal meaning, play with the ambiguity of text and help us to consider the active role of the viewer in the “translation” process of “reading” visual images. For more than two millennia, ironworking has shaped African cultures in the most fundamental ways. Colored Troops from the Civil War, the Buffalo Soldiers, women in the military, World War I training camps in Iowa, and the Tuskegee Airmen. Discover Africa’s heroes—some well-known, others perhaps surprising—and see artworks in new ways.
This is the first time these objects have toured the United States. Dr. Lowery owned the Africa Plantation, a 450-acre sugarcane and rice farm. Freedom seekers might have used the edible and medicinal plants displayed in this garden as a mechanism of survival while escaping from the plantations in the region. The National Museum of African Art is grateful to Nancy and David Barbour, Nicole and John Dintenfass, Lydia Puccinelli Robbins, and members of the museum’s Advisory Board for their generous support of its presentation of Striking Iron: The Art of African Blacksmiths. Intended for middle school children, the exhibition is fun for everybody—young and old, big and small, groups and individuals. Learn more about Batiste at www.alvinbatiste.com.
Diverse and wide-ranging in material, time period, style, and intended use, the objects in this exhibition span the continent of Africa to explore the importance of water for both practical and artistic purposes. Celebrated artists like Kader Attia, Wangechi Mutu, and Yinka Shonibare explore the themes of paradise, purgatory, and hell with video, photography, printmaking, painting, sculpture, fiber arts, and mixed media installation.
Gifts and Blessings examines the historical context and dynamism of contemporary cloth production through a comprehensive collection of textiles, including silk and cotton wrappers, burial shrouds, marriage cloths, fashions and textile art, and two important cloths given as diplomatic gifts to President Grover Cleveland in 1886 by Malagasy Queen Ranavalona III. American and international visitors can better understand and appreciate the contributions of African Americans to America by visiting these permanent exhibits at the APEX Museum. Located at the crossroads of Africa and the Indian Ocean, the Swahili coast has been a vibrant arena of global cultural convergence for over one millennium. In the cities of the West African nation of Senegal, stylish women have often used jewelry as part of an overall strategy of exhibiting their elegance and prestige. The upstairs was once used as a school. Other entertainment greats from the rural area include Claiborne Williams, Billy Kersand, Papa Celestine, Worthia “Showboy” Thomas, Ernie Kato, Kid Ory, Fats Domino, and hundreds of others. The reach of trans-Saharan exchange is revealed in the fragments excavated from archaeological sites, now uninhabited, that were once vibrant communities. All reservations are on a first-come, first-served basis. Anatsui indicates that the word gawu (derived from Ewe, his native language) has several potential meanings, including “metal” and “a fashioned cloak.” The term therefore manages to encapsulate the medium, process and format of the works on view, reflecting the artist’s transformation of discarded materials into objects of striking beauty and originality. This silk and lace shawl was given to Tubman by Queen Victoria of England. Each partner site will feature a host of multidisciplinary activities.
Numbers only. Conversations: African and African American Artworks in Dialogue brings together artworks from the world-class collections of the National Museum of African Art and Camille O. and William H. Cosby Jr.