Perspectives Africa in Focus

Africa in Focus

Exhibitions that highlight The Met's engagement with Africa.

Nov 29, 2023

Installation view of the exhibition

The expansion of The Met's mission to present art from sub-Saharan Africa through the gift of a core collection of works given by Nelson Rockefeller was the catalyst for an influential program of special exhibitions. These have highlighted artistic achievements through major international loans from the region that address the scope and complexity of its deep and expansive history pioneered by Nigeria’s National Museums in 1980 to those recognizing its leading practitioners, such as "The Buli Master and Other Hands."

Mosaic in the shape of a map with a title in yellow that reads

Africa & Byzantium

This long-awaited exhibition highlights how the continent contributed to the development of the premodern world and offers a more complete history of the vibrant multiethnic societies of north and east Africa that shaped the artistic, economic, and cultural life of Byzantium and beyond.

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Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara

Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara

This groundbreaking presentation brings to life the artistic traditions of the influential pre-colonial states that developed in Niger, Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal between the sixth and the nineteenth century.

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Image of a marble statue next to an iron one

The African Origin of Civilization

Through twenty-one pairings of works from different African cultures and eras, this exhibition provides a rare opportunity to appreciate the extraordinary creativity of the continent across five millennia, revealing unexpected parallels and contrasts. Although there was no contact between their creators, the works share deep and underrecognized histories.

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Afrofuturism graphic identity, red, blue, green pattern with image of African American woman

Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room

This project has roots in the homes of Seneca Village, of which only a fragmented history remains. Like other period rooms throughout the Museum, this installation is a fabrication of a domestic space that assembles furnishings to create an illusion of authenticity.

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Exhibition poster for Heroic Africans: Legendary Leaders, Iconic Sculptures. A detailed bust sculpture faces the left.

Heroic Africans

This major international loan exhibition challenges conventional perceptions of African art. It considers eight landmark sculptural traditions from West and Central Africa created between the twelfth and early twentieth centuries in terms of the individual subjects who lie at the origins of the representations.

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Additional Exhibitions

Surrealism Beyond Borders
October 11, 2021–January 30, 2022 

Making The Met: 1870-2020
August 29, 2020–January 3, 2021

The Facade Commission: Wangechi Mutu, The New Ones, Will Free Us
September 9, 2019–November 1, 2020 

Home Is a Foreign Place: Recent Acquisitions in Context
April 9, 2019–March 12, 2020 (intended closing date June 21, 2020)

In and Out of the Studio: Photographic Portraits from West Africa
August 31, 2015–January 3, 2016

Pattern, Color, Light: Architectural Ornament in the Near East (500–1000)
July 20, 2015–January 10, 2016

Ancient Egypt Transformed: The Middle Kingdom
October 12, 2015–January 24, 2016

William Kentridge: The Refusal of Time
October 22, 2013–May 11, 2014 

In Praise of Shadows: William Kentridge in the Collection
August 26, 2013-February 2, 2014 

The Dawn of Egyptian Art
April 10–August 5, 2012

African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde
November 27, 2012–September 2, 2013 

Reconfiguring an African Icon: Odes to the Mask by Modern and Contemporary Artists from Three Continents
March 8–August 21, 2011

Paper Trails: Selected Works from the Collection
July 19–November 27, 2011