From Mali to Madagascar: The Met’s African Art Collection Renewed

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Michael C. Rockefeller Wing was built over the course of the 1970s to showcase the world-class collections of art from sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania, and the Ancient Americas assembled by Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller.

When it opened in 1982, its neutral Modernist galleries set the standard for fine arts presentation of non-Western art. Forty-three years later, a re-envisioned edition of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing opens to the public on May 31. While the Wing remains 40,000 square feet in size, its glass wall abutting Central Park, gallery design, and flow of the collections within have undergone a radical transformation.

The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing’s renewal was developed over the course of nearly a decade and executed in collaboration with WHY Architects. The key objectives have been to conceptually reframe and afford greater autonomy and distinction to what are three major regions of the world through drawing upon relevant architectural vernaculars, reintroduce the permanent collection with advances in art historical scholarship, and incorporate filtered natural light within an upgraded interior.

Within the third of the space allocated for art from sub-Saharan Africa, a grandiose high ceiling main gallery draws aesthetic inspiration from one of the continent’s great landmarks, Mali’s Great Mosque in Jenne. At either side of that awe-inspiring interior are lateral sections devoted to regional chapters of the subcontinent’s artistic traditions. The presentation of the collection within unfolds in a geographic survey extending from Mali to Madagascar. Its installation places a premium on viewing works of sculpture in the round so that iconic landmarks of the collection shine brighter than previously.

A radically different feature is the penetration of color introduced by the ubiquitous presence of textiles. These represent a diversity of techniques,  formats, and aesthetics, from stunning bodily fashions to the grandeur of creations designed to define architectural interiors. Among the marvels to behold is the remarkably complex composition and epic scale of a thirteen-foot Mende kpoikpoi canvas from Sierra Leone. Assembled from horizontally woven bands, its mesmerizing dynamic composition of checkerboard, striated, and triangular motif patterns complements the designs applied by Baga sculptors to sinuous serpent headdresses from neighboring Guinea that share the same sightline.