National Museum of African Art

History

In the 1950s, American Foreign Service officer Warren M. Robbins collected African figures, masks, books, and textiles from German antique shops. Upon returning to Washington, D.C., in 1960, he purchased a house on Capitol Hill and opened his collection for viewing. Robbins, without museum, arts, or fundraising experience, believed that the collection could advance interracial civil rights by improving how white people's understanding of African culture. Starting in 1963, he expanded his Capitol Hill house museum into adjacent townhouses, including the former house of abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The collections eventually occupied nine townhouses and over a dozen other properties near the Supreme Court Building.

The museum was formally founded in 1964 as the Museum of African Art, and its first show consisted of the collection and two outside pieces. Under Robbins's tenure, the museum focused on traditional African art and its educational mission towards black cultural heritage. It also served as a friendly meeting place for individuals interested in American racial politics, in-keeping with the 1960s and '70s Black Arts Movement effort to change American perceptions towards African cultures. Robbins referred to his museum as "an education department with a museum attached". By 1976, the African art museum had a 20-person staff, 6,000-object collection, and Robbins had visited Africa for the first time.

To ensure the museum's longevity, Robbins lobbied Congress to have the Smithsonian Institution, a federal group of museums and research centers, absorb it. The House of Representatives approved this plan in 1978 with backing from Representatives John Brademas, Lindy Boggs, Ron Dellums, the Congressional Black Caucus, and former Vice President Hubert Humphrey. The Smithsonian directors adopted the museum the next year and began plans to move the collection from the townhouses into a proper museum. In 1981, the museum was renamed the National Museum of African Art.

In early 1983, former Brooklyn Museum curator of African cultures Sylvia Williams became the museum's director. Later that year, the Smithsonian broke ground on a new, dedicated building for the African art museum on the National Mall. The new complex, situated mostly underground, multiplied the museum's exhibition space upon its September 1987 opening. Over time, perspectives towards African art shifted from ethnographic interest to the study of traditional objects for their craftsmanship and aesthetic properties. Williams took a scholarly, art historian approach to the museum, and pursued high-cost, high-reward pieces including contemporary works and works from Arab North Africa, beyond the traditional Sub-Saharan. The museum's founder criticized this direction and felt that the institution's public role was neglected for "esoteric scholarship".

Following Williams's death in 1996, Roslyn Walker, a curator at the museum, served as its director from 1997 through her 2002 retirement. Walker continued the direction of her predecessor and added a dedicated contemporary art gallery and curator. She also created a development office, which raised money for an early 2000s renovation of the museum's pavilion. Sharon Patton, former director of Oberlin College's Allen Memorial Art Museum, served as director between 2003 and 2008. Her tenure included more shows targeting children and an advisory board mass resignation over Smithsonian leadership.

Johnnetta Cole, an anthropologist and former president of Spelman and Bennett College, became the museum's director in 2009. Her tenure became associated with a controversial 2015 exhibit that featured works from comedian Bill Cosby's private collection just as allegations of sexual assault against him became public. Two years earlier, the 2013 federal budget sequestration closed one of the museum's permanent exhibitions. Cole will retire in March 2017.

Administration

The Washington Post wrote that the museum's obstacles, as of the late 2000s, included low attendance, modest budget, concealed location, and leadership turnovers. Thirty years after joining the Smithsonian, the African art museum remains one of the smallest museums in the complex, with 213,000 visitors in 2016—about half of the 2009 visitor count and less than one percent of the 28 million annual Smithsonian visitors. This is due, in part, to its location, which is hidden from the National Mall by the original Smithsonian Institution Building, known as the Castle. Visitor counts have fluctuated between 200,000 and 400,000 since the 2000s, and in the mid-2000s was on par with its underground neighbor museum, the Sackler Gallery. The museum's annual budget has fluctuated from $4.3 million (late 1990s) to $6 million (mid-2000s), and was $5 million in 2016. By comparison, the museum had a 34-person staff in 2016, down from 48 in the late 1990s. Like many other museums in the 2000s, the African art museum sought to expand into private funding and an endowment when public funding stagnated. The museum trailed behind other Smithsonian entities in its unified fundraising campaign, into which the museum was expected to pay about $2.1 million. In late 2016, the museum held its first African Arts Awards Dinner for over 500 guests.

Architecture

The museum's National Mall building construction began in mid-1983. The project, which also included the Sackler Gallery for the Smithsonian's Asian art, created 368,000 square feet of exhibition space at a cost of $73.2 million, half of which from the federal government. Almost all of this room was created underground so as not to affect the quadrangle's landmark Smithsonian Institution Building (the Castle), its greenery, or its view. The Smithsonian Castle hides the museum and South Quadrangle from the National Mall, which has contributed to the museum's lower attendance compared with other Mall attractions. The quadrangle project's design architect was Jean-Paul Carlhian of Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbott, based on a concept by Junzō Yoshimura. The two new museums had little involvement in the architectural designs, which were drawn in the 1970s prior to their arrival.

The African art and Sackler buildings were built as twin pavilions, each one story above ground and with similar display space: five galleries each, and only one with natural light. They are differentiated by their roof adornments: domes on the African art building and pyramids on the Sackler. The African art pavilion was built in red granite and uses the circle shape as its architectural theme, with round windows, rounded entrance staircase, and six, round domes on its roof. Inside, a limestone foyer overlooks the gardens and leads visitors down curving stair hall leads visitors down curving stairs to the galleries. The galleries are large and customized by exhibition designers into smaller rooms to better suit small objects. The buildings are visible from Independence Avenue, and the new Enid A. Haupt Garden runs between them and the Smithsonian Institution Building. Underground, the museum and offices occupy the first two levels, and a third level hosts exhibition and educational rooms. Its levels are connected by a three-story enclosed arcade with large skylights that poke through the several feet of dirt that support the garden. The pavilion was renovated in the early 2000s with a major donation from Eastman Kodak.

The museum is slated for remodeling as part of the $2 billion Smithsonian South Mall project. Plans from the Danish architects, Bjarke Ingels Group, would replace the above-ground pavilion with new mall-facing entrances. The renovation is supported by private and federal investment, and is expected to begin in 2016 and finish in 10 to 20 years.

Collections

The National Museum of African Art was the first institution dedicated to African art in the United States, followed by the New York-based Center for African Art (now The African Center) in 1984. The National Museum's collection is larger. As of 2008, it consisted of 9,000 objects and 300,000 photographs. The objects range from 15th-century sculptures and masks to multi-media contemporary art, and the photographs include major contributions from photojournalists Eliot Elisofon and Constance Stuart Larrabee. Elisofon covered major 20th century events for Life, and Larrabee covered World War II and South African life. As of 2004, the museum had 400 contemporary artworks. The museum collects items for both their traditional and aesthetic uses, and receives an average of 67 gifts annually. Its breadth of collections and special exhibitions made the museum "a solid force in the international art world" and the main venue for contemporary African art in the United States, according to The Washington Post.

At the time of the museum's move to the National Mall, its permanent collection consisted of more than 6,000 art objects, including sculpture, artifacts, textiles, and a large photography collection, with major contributions from Eliot Elisofon and two New York businessmen. This original collection focused on Sub-Saharan Africa, with better representation of the Guinea coast and Western Sudan than the Central African region. The United States's relative lack of colonial era African art object acquisitions was reflected in the donations that composed the museum's idiosyncratic collection. Some early highlights of the collection include an Edo–Portuguese ivory spoon and an Akan gold pendant from Mildred Barnes Bliss. The museum's first acquisitions budget came with joining the Smithsonian.

Within a decade, the collection had expanded to 7,000 traditional and modern objects from across all of Africa. Under Walker's tenure, the museum expanded its contemporary art focus, with a permanent gallery opened in 1997. The same year, photographer Constance Stuart Larrabee gave the museum 3,000 photographs from South Africa. In 2005, the museum received the Walt Disney-Tishman Collection of 525 works spanning most major African art styles and 75 cultures. The acquisition was a validation of the museum's status, given the other institutions who vied for the collection. The museum's library also grew upon joining the Smithsonian, from 3,000 to 30,000 volumes in visual arts, anthropology, cooking, history, religion, and travel, especially works published in Africa. It now contains 50,000 volumes.

Exhibitions

The museum hosted 130 special exhibitions in its first 25 years, and since joining the Smithsonian, hosts two to three temporary exhibitions annually. In its pre-Smithsonian years, the museum's exhibitions were often loaned, such as from the Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation. In the early '80s, its curators organized "focus" exhibitions centered around a single object from the collection. The museum hosted outside curators and traveling exhibitions. Its shows became more ambitious as its museum relations and budget grew. At the opening of the National Mall building, the museum showed 375 works in five small- and mid-sized exhibits with survey and single-theme scopes. The central exhibit, "African Art in the Cycle of Life", exhibited 88 items in seven sections following seven phases of African tribal life so as to provide social context for their use. For example, sections such as "Continuity" displayed hand-carved maternity figures, "Transition" displayed coming-of-age ceremonial masks, and "Towards a Secure World" displayed priest and healer items. Many of the pieces were masterpieces borrowed from American and European museums and private collections. Another exhibit showed 100 items from the museum's own collection. The remaining three exhibits were smaller: West African textiles, Benin sculptures and copper reliefs, and useful objects like baskets, hairpins, and snuff boxes. The exhibitions were chosen to confront stereotypes of African art as overly "expressive, ritualistic, and ... undocumented", and instead show perspectives overlooked in Western views on African art.

Curators sometimes choose to put items in proximity of each other for comparative value, though they might be shown in separate vitrines. The curators also accompany the objects with contextual information, such as explanatory text, commissioned videos, and photographs that show the item in situ. The exhibit designers also avoid stereotypical presentations such as dramatically dark galleries or fictional environments. With more year-round visitors on the National Mall, the museum extended its exhibits from two months to eight or more.

During the Walker years—the late '90s and early 2000s—the museum hosted shows on Egyptian contemporary art and Malagasy textiles. A 1997 gift from photographer Constance Stuart Larrabee led to an in-house and traveling exhibition. Walker organized a 1998 retrospective of Yoruba sculptor Olowe of Ise, a rare example of a single-person African art show. The exhibition's accompanying catalogue raisonne was the first such scholarly publication for a traditional African artist. The museum has also held solo exhibitions for artists including Sokari Douglas Camp (1989) and Yinka Shonibare (2010). Shows targeting children, such as "Playful Performers", drew crowds under Patton's directorship in the mid-2000s, as did "Treasures" shows from the museum's collection and artist visits. A 2004 show, "Insights", highlighted 30 works about Apartheid South Africa from its collection. In 2013, the museum received its largest gift, $1.8 million from Oman, towards a series that focuses on arts from the country and its links to cultures in the Near East.

The 2015 "Conversations: African and African-American Artworks in Dialogue", featuring works from the private collection of Bill and Camille Cosby, became controversial for mounting just as allegations of sexual assault against him became public. The museum's director had a long friendship with Cosbys, who also sat on the museum's advisory board. The exhibition was funded by a $716,000 donation from the Cosbys and had been planned to bring attention to the museum for its 50th anniversary. As the number of allegations increased, the museum created a sign that acknowledged the allegations and focused the exhibit on the artists and artworks, which remained on view. The Washington Post art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott wrote that the museum violated ethics and hurt its reputation by showing a private collection that had not been both pledged to the museum and displayed with outside works. Kennicott challenged whether the blue chip painters of Cosby's collection would have been "silenced" by ending the exhibition early.

Outreach

The museum prioritized education in its early, pre-Smithsonian years. Its founder referred to the institution as "an education department with a museum attached". The museum had an intimate atmosphere and emphasized programs that taught black cultural heritage. Many children from local schools attended the museum, which hosted exhibits including an exercise on "how to look at art" in comparing traditional African and modern art. Through the '90s, school groups took guided tours with trained docents. The new location on the National Mall increased the museum's unguided visits.

In the early 1980s, the Smithsonian found that few of its 20 million annual visitors were of a racial minority despite the city's large black population, and created a committee to address the disparity. As the African art museum had not yet moved to the National Mall, it served a black constituency in a racially mixed neighborhood, with racially integrated staff and programming popular among local school groups with its regular films, folk stories, and lectures. The museum also offered workshops on African stripweave and talking drum. Patton, museum director in the mid-2000s, said that the museum was not well known in Washington, as only half of taxi drivers knew its location. Patton's tenure included shows targeted towards children. As a result, the museum briefly served more children than adults. Around this time, the museum held about 10 special events a year. The Washington Post wrote that the museum "struggled ... to attract visitors and donations" in 2016, which was exacerbated by the Cosby controversy.

Reception

At the National Mall building's opening, three New York Times reviewers criticized the architectural choices behind the building, namely its choice of materials and lack of natural light underground. 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 had reserved praise for the complex's "clever" layout and the designer's maximized underground utility with minimal above-ground changes. Goldberger praised the building's craftsmanship, interiors, and responsive gallery spaces. The other reviewers, in turn, were unsettled to see works once associated with the outdoors instead displayed with no natural light, and feared the precedent for other museums, adding that the lack of light was unaccommodating to both viewers and the works. The museum's director, however, noted that natural light would add conservation issues for their wood sculptures. The museum felt restrained as part of the larger complex, and lacking in "flair".

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. 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. 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. 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".

Joanna Shaw-Eagle, reviewing the museum for the Washington Times, wrote "It's impossible 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. The reviewer also praised the bright colors of the "Playful Performers" children's exhibition.