African Modernism in America, 1947–1967

In 1961, the Harmon Foundation, a leading American organization devoted to the support and promotion of African and African American artists, opened its landmark exhibition of contemporary African art entitled Art from Africa of Our Time. The Museum of Modern Art in New York also exhibited its first acquisition of contemporary African art, Men Taking Banana Beer to Bride by Night (1956) by the Tanzanian and Makerere-trained artist Sam Ntiro (Fig. 1) that year. The simultaneity of the Harmon Foundation show and the MoMA purchase was crucially important, drawing attention to African artists' modernity in a moment of shifting relationships between the United States and Africa. By 1961, many African nations had gained independence from colonial rule. During the same year, the Freedom Riders protested segregation in the American South; Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba was killed in a CIA-supported assassination plot; and eminent Pan-Africanist W.E.B. Du Bois...