{"id":2116770,"date":"2026-08-27T14:55:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T11:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2116770"},"modified":"2026-08-27T14:55:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T11:55:20","slug":"moma-to-stage-major-exhibition-on-mid-century-african-modernism-in-2027","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2116770","title":{"rendered":"MoMA to Stage Major Exhibition on Mid-Century African Modernism in 2027"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/MoMA_Mohammed-Khadda_Talisman-rouge_1969_2000px.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe Museum of Modern Art in New York will stage a major exhibition examining mid-century modernism in Africa next year.<\/p>\n

\n\tRunning May 2\u2013August 14, 2027, the thematic exhibition, titled \u201cFreedom and Futures: Emancipatory Art in Africa, 1956\u20131982,\u201d will bring together around 250 objects, including 40 from MoMA\u2019s collection. The exhibition is curated by Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, a painting and sculpture curator who also leads the Africa group of the museum\u2019s Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP) initiative, with Erica DiBenedetto, a former curatorial associate of painting and sculpture.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe focal point of the exhibition is the term \u201cemancipatory art\u201d between the years 1956 and 1982, which Nzwei characterized in an interview as \u201ca moment of great transformation and change around the world, especially in Africa\u201d where discussions focused on \u201cpolitical independence\u2014the argument of that period was around liberation or emancipation. Artists in Africa were making works that were in the spirit of the change that was in air.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn thinking about that period of history critically as a moment of decolonization, Nwezi said raises the question of \u201cHow might we understand the relationship between political change that was happening and artists who were also part of that change and how they were responding to that? In other words, how were artists creating an aesthetic that lent itself to decolonization? That\u2019s how we arrived at \u2018emancipatory art.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe added, \u201cThis is an opportunity for us to find a visual and art historical language to help describe that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 26-year span of the exhibition, Nzwei said, is also intentional. While 1960 is often considered \u201cThe Year of Africa\u201d because 17 countries on the continent achieved independence that year, \u201cpolitical independence was not achieved in one fell swoop in Africa,\u201d he said, pointing to countries like Morocco, Tunisia, and Sudan achieving political independence in 1956, while Zimbabwe did not achieve political independence from white rule until 1980.<\/p>\n

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\"An<\/div>\n<\/div>
Thomas Mukarobgwa, Dying People in the Bush<\/em>, 1962. <\/span>\u00a9Estate of Thomas Mukarobgwa\/The Museum of Modern Art, New York<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tNzewi first started thinking about the exhibition shortly after joining MoMA in 2019, when he began to realize the museum\u2019s history in being at the forefront of engaging with African modernism in the 1960s, beginning with the acquisition of Sam Ntiro\u2019s 1956 painting Men Taking Banana Beer to Bride by Night<\/em> in 1960. \u201cMoMA was the first institution in the US, if not the Western world, that was really interested in modern African art, and at some point, we went along collecting this work,\u201d he said. \u201cMoMA\u2019s relationship with Africa is really from the moment of independence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHighlighted in the exhibition are the conferences and festivals that took place at this time, including the Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris in 1956, which Alioune Diop, the publisher of the journal Pr\u00e9sence Africaine<\/em>, created to gather Black intellectuals after attending the Bandung Conference in Indonesia the previous year. In anticipation of African political independence, according to Nzwei, attendees discussed questions like, What would be be Africa\u2019s contribution to cultural modernity?<\/p>\n

\n\tA second Congress in Rome in 1959 would catalyze similar events in Africa, five of which will be discussed in the exhibition, such as the International Congress of African Culture in Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) in 1962, which MoMA founding director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., who had advocated for the acquisition of Ntiro\u2019s painting, attended, as well as the First World Festival of Negro Arts in 1966 in Dakar, Senegal and the Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algiers in 1969.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAn important argument the show makes,\u201d Nzwei said, \u201cis that emancipatory art, especially in that moment, can be understood as emerging at the intersection of national aspiration and nation building and Black solidarity. Artists had a vision for new nations, but that vision artists had for their individual countries was also in dialog with the spirit of Pan-Africanism that was on the continent and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"A<\/div>\n<\/div>
Malangatana Valente Ngwenya, Cry for Freedom<\/em> (O grito da liberdade), 1973. <\/span>\u00a9Estate of Malangatana Valente Ngwenya\/The Museum of Modern Art, New York<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tAmong the highlights of the exhibition is Mozambican artist Valente Malangatana\u2019s 1973 Cry of Freedom <\/em>(O Grito da Liberdade), which was shown at the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (better known as FESTAC \u201977) in Lagos. The painting, now owned by MoMA, shows a m\u00e9lange of people\u2014soldiers, civilians, field workers\u2014and animals, as well as daggers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a very surrealistic picture,\u201d Nzwei said, characterizing the work as one of the exhibition\u2019s lodestars. \u201cThe language in the work is definitely political and very decolonial. It\u2019s speaking the vocabulary that describes artistic aspirations in Mozambique when Mozambique was under colonial domination. The rhetoric of emancipation, the rhetoric of liberation was something that [almost] every artist was interested in.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"A<\/div>\n<\/div>
Uche Okeke, Women Riot<\/em> (Aba Revolt), 1965. <\/span>\u00a92026 The Professor Uche Okeke Legacy Limited\/The Museum of Modern Art, New Yo<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tWhile the focus of this exhibition is on emancipatory art as it relates to the African continent and its diaspora, Nzwei said he believes this is a term that can be expanded more broadly to think about similar movements in Asia, Latin American, and Eastern Europe. Artists working in these different geographical contexts were often engaged in \u201cthe language of liberation, the language of colonization, the language of emancipation,\u201d he said, noting that emancipatory art also aims to define \u201cthe relationship between politics, aesthetics, and cultural aspirations that happened at that moment. \u2026 Emancipatory art takes into account the deep experiences and aspirations of artists in Africa but also beyond Africa\u2014to artists in Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNzwei said he hopes the exhibition will not only align with MoMA\u2019s recent efforts to present \u201ca more global narrative of art history, and specifically Africa\u2019s participation in that narrative\u201d but that it might ultimately redefine \u201cour understanding mid-century modernism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen thinking about the exhibition\u2019s focus more broadly, \u201cyou realize that emancipatory art really is the most definitive way to understand modernism of the mid-century beyond movements that are well-established like Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, Minimalism,\u201d Nzwei said. \u201cI think the biggest art historical impact that I expect this exhibition to make is to help us further understand the different threads of modern art that we don\u2019t yet fully grasp [and] to find a different way of understanding mid-century modernism beyond the way is currently being discussed\u2014but from the perspective of Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/moma-emancipatory-art-in-africa-exhibition-1234796064\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/MoMA_Mohammed-Khadda_Talisman-rouge_1969_2000px.jpg?w=1024″] The Museum of Modern Art in New York will stage a major exhibition examining mid-century modernism in Africa next year. Running May 2\u2013August 14, 2027, the thematic exhibition, titled \u201cFreedom and Futures: Emancipatory Art in Africa, 1956\u20131982,\u201d will bring together around 250 objects, including 40 from MoMA\u2019s collection. The exhibition is curated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2116770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2116770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2116770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2116770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2116770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}