Robbins was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, on September 4, 1923, the youngest of eleven children born to Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. Robbins was its first director until 1983. When the collection became part of the Smithsonian Institution in 1979, it was renamed the National Museum of African Art. Kathleen Bickford Berzock, and Christa Clarke (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011), 265. Binkley et al., “Building a National Collection of African Art: The Life History of a Museum,” in Representing Africa in American Art Collections: A Century of Collecting and Display, ed. Both the museum and the institute were housed in Northeast Washington, D.C., in a townhouse that had been the home of the abolitionist and statesman Frederick Douglass in the 1870s.
In 1966, the museum established the Frederick Douglass Institute of Negro Arts and History, the museum’s educational arm. However, in 1964, by leveraging his diplomatic experience and passion for African art and culture, he founded the Museum of African Art, which he initially privately managed as he sought additional funding. Warren Murray Robbins (1923–2008) was not immensely wealthy, had not been to Africa, and had no experience running museums or formal training in art history prior to the 1960s.
We want to be a museum that communicates. The museum can also host private events throughout its spaces, including a pavilion, a mezzanine, a lecture hall and conference rooms.We want to show the rich creative heritage of Africa, and to underscore the implications of this heritage in America’s quest for interracial understanding. The National Museum of African Art also offers docent-led tours of the museum every week, as well as film screenings and panel discussions that serve to increase the dialogue surrounding Africa and its art. Water’s importance is reflected across the many different materials and styles highlighted in this collection. The museum also boats stunning photographic archives and a world-class library.Ĭurrents: Water in African Art, one of the museum’s ongoing exhibits, focuses on pieces with water as their theme, encountering myths, metaphors and rituals along the way. The Walt Disney-Tishman African Art Collection Highlights features rare works of traditional art from sub-Saharan Africa. The standout piece: an incredible sculpture of Haitian leader Toussaint Louverture by Senegalese artist Ousmane Sow. Collection highlights include African Mosaic: Selections from the Permanent Collection, which collects museum purchases and gifts spanning a decade.
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