The Africa Center

The Africa Center is an institution dedicated to increasing public understanding and appreciation of African art and culture, located at Fifth Avenue and 110th Street in East Harlem, Manhattan, New York City. Founded in 1984 as the Center for African Art, it has undergone several name changes and relocations throughout its history, becoming the Museum for African Art in 1993 and later assuming its current name. Positioned near the northern end of Fifth Avenue's Museum Mile, the center has established itself as a significant venue for presenting African art to Western audiences in innovative ways, organizing nearly 60 critically acclaimed exhibitions that have traveled to almost 140 venues nationally and internationally, including 15 other countries.

The institution opened in September 1984 as the Center for African Art under founding director Susan Mullin Vogel, who had previously served as Associate Curator in the Department of Primitive Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Its original location was on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in a pair of converted town houses at 54 East 68th Street. Vogel curated groundbreaking exhibitions that questioned how African art was presented to Western audiences and how museum practices structured public knowledge. In February 1993, the institution changed its name to the Museum for African Art and moved to a larger space at 593 Broadway in SoHo, designed by architect and artist Maya Lin. After Vogel departed in 1994 to become director of the Yale University Art Gallery, Grace C. Stanislaus became executive director in February 1995, followed by Elsie McCabe (later Elsie McCabe Thompson) from 1997 until her resignation in 2012. In September 2002, the museum moved to an interim location at 36-01 43rd Avenue in Long Island City, Queens, intended as temporary quarters before a permanent move to Fifth Avenue and 110th Street. The museum closed its Queens public gallery in 2006. In 2013, the board changed the name to the New Africa Center, later shortened to the Africa Center, and shifted its intended purpose from art museum to a clearinghouse and public policy institute for all things Africa. After years of delayed openings and stalled fundraising, the opening was pushed to 2015. Michelle D. Gavin, former United States Ambassador to Botswana, served as managing director from 2015 to late 2016. In February 2019, Terenga, a West African fast-casual restaurant, opened in the space. Martin Kimani was appointed President and CEO in 2025.

The institution's collections and programming focus on the arts and cultures of Africa and the African diaspora. Throughout its existence, it has emphasized public education programs that raise awareness of African culture. The center has produced scholarly catalogues to accompany its exhibitions, with forty of its exhibitions accompanied by such publications. Its mission has evolved over time, with the 2013 reorientation broadening from a traditional art museum toward a more comprehensive cultural center and public policy institute addressing all aspects of Africa. The institution also operates a store selling authentic handmade African crafts.

While specific permanent collection objects are not detailed in available sources, the institution is recognized for its exhibition history rather than a fixed collection. Under Susan Mullin Vogel's direction, it organized several landmark exhibitions that reshaped the field. Art/Artifact: African Art in Anthropology Collections (1988) examined how context affects the perception of African objects. Africa Explores: 20th-Century African Art (1991) surveyed contemporary artistic production on the continent. Exhibition-ism: Museums and African Art (1994) continued the critical examination of museum display practices. These exhibitions established the venue's reputation for intellectual rigor and innovation in presenting African art. Roberta Smith wrote in The New York Times in 1989 that the 1980s may come to be seen as the beginning of the golden age of African art exhibitions, based largely on Vogel's work. Holland Cotter noted in 2010 that in the 1980s and 1990s the institution revolutionized the way art could be exhibited.

The current building at Fifth Avenue and East 110th Street in East Harlem was designed by architect Robert A.M. Stern. It represents the first museum building constructed on New York's Museum Mile since the completion of the Guggenheim in 1959. The building encompasses approximately 90,000 square feet with 16,000 square feet of exhibition space, and includes a theater, education center, library, classrooms, event space, restaurant, and gift shop. The outer shell was completed in 2010, but critical interior build-out was delayed by stalled fundraising and leadership transitions. The German Wikipedia source notes that the building also includes a number of apartments. The design aimed to make the institution accessible to a wide range of people from around the world, modeling itself after the Asia Society and similar organizations.

The Africa Center is located at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 110th Street in East Harlem, Manhattan, near the northern end of Museum Mile. The institution has experienced prolonged delays in fully opening to the public. After the outer shell was completed in 2010, critical interior work stalled, and the center presented pop-up events in its new space while awaiting completion. The French Wikipedia source indicates that the institution remained closed from the early 2010s awaiting funding to reopen. In February 2019, Terenga, a West African fast-casual restaurant, opened in the space, offering some public access. Since 2019, the center has hosted a Shared Studios portal connecting in real time to communities worldwide, with the majority of connections to sites on the African continent. The growth into a cultural center was spearheaded by CEO Uzodinma Iweala and board members including Chelsea Clinton, Halima Dangote, and Hadeel Ibrahim, daughter of Mo Ibrahim. The institution's website is http://www.theafricacenter.org/.