iMuseum of Modern Art (MoMA)Midtown Manhattan
Architects of Liberation: Modernism in Western Africa
The first major survey of modern architecture across seven West African nations from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, exploring how building shaped newly independent states. Most objects have never been shown publicly.
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The first room runs archival film across two walls, and a long case holds the reading list of independence: Chinua Achebe's A Man of the People, the journal Black Orpheus, Kwame Nkrumah's I Speak of Freedom. After that, it's buildings.
About 450 drawings, models, photographs and films follow, most never shown publicly, from seven countries between the late 1950s and the early 1980s. The rooms move from dams and skyscrapers to trade fairs, then universities. You'll want to lean in on the reconstructed models: Architectural Record's critic got close enough that a docent asked for a step back. Midtown took the glass box as delivered; western Africa sent it back with edits.
Domus called it "a powerful, long-overdue chronicle". Architectural Record rated the last rooms, on trade fairs and universities, the strongest, but found the show "often avoids defining the intellectual concepts that made liberation meaningful". It's in the third-floor Menschel Galleries, included with $30 admission, until January 2, 2027.
Look for
The La Pyramide model
A model rebuilt by Cooper Union students shows Rinaldo Olivieri's Abidjan tower with its stepped pyramid facades and louvres angled against the sun.
Dakar's CICES trade fair
Look for the triangle motif its French architects repeated at every level, from the site plan down to the cross-section of the handrails.
Jean Léon's spaceship auditorium
His concrete auditorium for Lycée Mamie Adjoua, a girls' school in Yamoussoukro, looks ready for take-off, shown beside drawings from his sketchbooks.
Senghor's unbuilt Musée des Civilisations Noires
Drawings and an original model for the museum Senegal's president never got to build sit in a small gallery between the fairs and the universities.
James Barnor's trade-fair photographs
His pictures of the Africa Pavilion at the 1967 Ghana International Trade Fair in Accra hang in the event-architecture room.
Good for
- Nerding Out
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Skip if
You want the ideas behind the buildings explained: Architectural Record found Pan-Africanism and Africanization left undefined.
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Image credits
6
- Architects of Liberation: Modernism in Western AfricaCourtesy of Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
- Siena: The Art of Bronze, 1450-1500The Frick Collection
- Splendido, As Seen by Chris RhodesCourtesy of Aperture
- Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)hibino via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- The Frick CollectionJim.henderson / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- The Morgan Library & MuseumMike Peel, CC BY-SA 4.0