African Art

Art & Art History General Guide
Topics in Art History

Note: Many of the databases and/or article links referenced in this guide require CaneID authentication through the the UM Library system unless denoted by the "open access" symbol. 

Brooklyn Art Museum (BAM), Brooklyn, NY
BAM was one of the first museums in the United States to collect and exhibit the Arts of Africa. 

Digital Benin
Digital Benin brings together all objects, historical photographs and rich documentation material from collections worldwide to provide a long-requested overview of the royal artefacts from Benin Kingdom looted in the late nineteenth century.

Field Museum Chicago / Africa Collections
The Museum’s collection of material culture from the continent of Africa includes over 173,000 objects.  The African collections are comprised of nearly 30,000 ethnographic and approximately 143,500 archaeological objects.

Fowler Museum at UCLA
Superb representation of the arts of many African nations, including objects from Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), Kenya, Zambia, and South Africa. The Yoruba collection contains a spectacular array of beaded objects, including a majestic throne, elaborate chiefly gowns, and sophisticated divination regalia.

High Art Museum, Atlanta, GA
High’s African art collection includes a diversity of art forms from ancient through contemporary times that represent the depth and breadth of the African diaspora.

Lowe Art Museum, Coral Gables, FL 

Menil Collection Arts of Africa,  Houston, TX

Metropolitan Museum of Art, (MMA) NY
The Met's collection of art of the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific Islands, and North, Central, and South America comprises more than eleven thousand works of art of varied materials and types, representing diverse cultural traditions from as early as 3000 B.C.E. to the present.  

Museum of Fine Arts, (MFA) Boston, MA
From bronze altarpieces to palace pillars to historic men’s masks, the growing MFA collection of African and Pacific art includes masterpieces from the 16th to 20th centuries. 

Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Houston, TX
Collections: Search “African American”

National Gallery of Art (NGA), Washington, DC
Explore a selection of works by African American artists included in the collection of the National Gallery of Art. 
  
Newark Museum of Art, Newark, NJ
The Newark Art Museum ranks among the nation's earliest and most comprehensive collections representing the breadth, diversity and vitality of artistic creativity throughout the continent of Africa.  Its holdings comprise nearly 4,000 objects of ritual, ceremonial and daily use, as well as popular urban and fine arts. 

Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) Salem, MA 

Pitt Rivers Museum 
Search object, photograph collections and listings of manuscript collections.

Seattle Art Museum (SAM), Seattle, WA
Collections: Search “African American” and/or African

Smithsonian National Museum of African Art Washington, DC

Virginia Museum of Fine Art (VMFA) 
Considered one of the most comprehensive African Art colletions in the United States. 

Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art Lagos

 

The following guides originate from the University of Miami Libraries Architecture Research Center (ARC) on the Coral Gables campus of the University of Miami. This location is the homeland of the Tequesta, Seminole and Miccosukee peoples.

This acknowledgment is one of the ways in which we work to educate ourselves about this land, its history, and our relationships with the land and each other.