Exhibitions

The Transfiguration

The New exhibition will be open on September 29th, 2013.


Passports and Masquettes

Passports and Masquettes

Diminutive Spirits. Passports and Masquettes from the collection of Albert Stanziano.
‘ I would like you to share with me a passion I have had for over twenty five years, collecting ‘passport’ and ‘family’ masks from a variety of cultures from the African continent. These masks are imbued with the spirit of their larger counterparts, and form an important spiritual dimension for the peoples…

Nigeria: The Fourteen Stations of the Cross

The Fourteen Stations of the Cross

This rare set of linocuts was printed in 1969 in several editions of about fifty by Bruce Onobrakpeya, an Urhobo man who has become Nigeria’s mast famous – and arguably best – artist.
Onobrakpeya came of age in the 1960s, the period when Nigeria won independence from Great Britain. Trained in schools with western-style courses of study…

Ivory Coast: A Passion for Life

MASK, BETE, IVORY COAST, CA 1950

A new exhibition, A Passion for Life: will open on Saturday, September 22, 2012 in celebration of the event Culture of Ivory Coast. It will feature Ivorian masterworks from the permanent collections of the SMA African Art Museum. These are documented by a brand new publication The SMA African Art Museum Guide to Collections: Volume I, which covers Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Guinea Bissau…

Burkina Faso: the Thomas G.B. Wheelock Gift

Burkina Faso

On display are plank masks, face masks and head crests, figure sculptures, men’s and women’s chairs and stools, jewelry and other items of personal adornment, musical instruments, and metalwork…

Mali Today: Photographs by Richard P. Wedeen, M.D. (online)

Mali Today - Weeden

These photographs of Mali were taken in November and December 2011 by Richard P. Wedeen, M.D. They were intended to capture the vitality of the contemporary indigenous culture…

INRI: Crosses and Crucifixes (2011)

INRI: Crosses and Crucifixes

The American Province of SMA will exhibit crosses from its permanent collections in the Chapel Wing of the African Art Museum. Although these crosses and crucifixes are Christian in iconography they are African in style and reflect the missionary zeal of the SMA international to help the neediest people in the most challenging places in the world…

Pax Rwanda: Embroideries by the Women of Savane Rutongo (2011)

Pax Rwanda

Pax Rwanda: Embroideries by the Women of Savane Rutongo is comprised of twenty exquisite embroideries by a cooperative of Hutu and Tutsi women who work together to survive in the aftermath of the horrific genocide of 1994…

Liberia: A Land Old and New

Liberia

Liberia: A Land Old and New celebrates a hundred years of the Society of African Missions in Liberia with masks, figure sculptures, textiles and costumes from the land founded by freed American slaves in 1847…

Symbolism In Ghana (2010)

Ghana: Akua’ Ba Dolls

The Symbolism In Ghana exhibition begins a six-month run at the African Art Museum of the SMA (Society of African Missions) Fathers in Tenafly, NJ. Spanning five cases, the exhibition explores five different aspects of Ghanaian culture: Adinkra, Military/Government/Commerce…

Mali: Masks of the Dogon (2010)

Mali: Rabbit Mask Dyommo

The Dogon people have created more than eighty mask types to represent characters in their cosmic myths. They are worn in large numbers in funeral dances. The Dogon use such dances to lead the homeless souls of the deceased to their final resting places in the world of spirit, where they become part of the ancestor realm…