National Museum of African Art
The National Museum of African Art is the Smithsonian Institution's African art museum, located on the National Mall of the United States capital. Its collections include 9,000 works of traditional and contemporary African art from both Sub-Saharan and North Africa, 300,000 photographs, and 50,000 library volumes. It was the first institution dedicated to African art in the United States and remains the largest collection. The Washington Post called the museum a mainstay in the international art world and the main venue for contemporary African art in the United States.
For other museums of African art, see Museum of African Art.
Former name
The museum was founded in 1964 by a former Foreign Service officer in Capitol Hill. The collection focused on traditional African art and an educational mission to teach black cultural heritage. To ensure the museum's longevity, the founder lobbied Congress to adopt the museum under the Smithsonian's auspices. It joined the Smithsonian in 1979 and became the National Museum of African Art two years later. A new, primarily underground museum building was completed in 1987, just off the National Mall and adjacent to other Smithsonian museums. It is among the Smithsonian's smallest museums.
The African art museum took a scholarly direction over the next twenty years, with less social programming. It collected traditional and contemporary works of historical importance. Exhibitions include both internal and borrowed works and have ranged from solo artists to broad survey shows. The museum hosts two-to-three temporary exhibitions and ten special events annually. The preferred abbreviation for its name is NMAfA.
Reception[edit]
At the National Mall building's opening, three New York Times reviewers criticized its design elements, namely the architect's choice of materials and lack of natural light underground.[22][6][27] Architecture critic Paul Goldberger considered the above-ground elements a "clunky ... pavilion of granite" whose elements were "woefully simplistic", unsubtle, and awkward compared to the Smithsonian Castle in the distance. He mildly praised the complex's "clever" layout and its maximized underground utility with minimal above-ground changes. Goldberger admired the building's craftsmanship, interiors, and responsive gallery spaces.[22] The other two Times reviewers, in turn, were unsettled to see works once associated with the outdoors instead displayed with no natural light,[6] and feared the precedent for other museums, adding that the lack of light was unaccommodating to both viewers and the works.[27] The museum's director, however, noted that natural light would cause conservation issues for their wood sculptures.[6] The museum felt restrained as part of the larger complex, one critic wrote, and deficient in style.[6]
Of the opening exhibition, the New York Times critic described the exhibits as often austere and understated in irregularly sized rooms that sometimes overwhelmed its contents. She was fondest of the small exhibits and the works imported from other museums.[27] The other Times reviewer found the museum's collection larger but "less spectacular" than that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, though the latter had more works available when it began its collection.[6] The opening exhibits, overall, piqued viewer curiosity in the subject and underscored the importance of religious belief and craftsmanship in the displayed works. The opening's reviewer struggled to generalize the African works, which ranged from face- and figure-focused to the elegant, geometric abstraction of West African strip weaving.[27] The other reviewer added that the museum's textiles exhibition overemphasized the connection between African art and everyday life, as the textiles had comparatively weaker "imaginative ... impact".[6]
"It's impossible", a reviewer wrote in The Washington Times, "not to be profoundly moved" by the museum's 2004 Apartheid exhibition. She praised the museum's contemporary collection but said that the works fought against their surroundings—the dedicated contemporary gallery was a good space with a poor ambiance.[36]
Official website
Media related to National Museum of African Art at Wikimedia Commons