"From across the street, one can see a young girl in a headwrap and a matching dress. Climbing the stairs inside the museum, one sees more than 3,000 stamp-sized photographs from professional and amateur contributors around the world, who responded to a call for images of the African diaspora. The mosaic shatters the notion of a Black monolith by presenting the variety and specificity of the African diasporic people: out of one, many."
"Throughout its initial decade, MoAD told stories of the African diaspora from the first humans to the present, mainly through permanent educational installations. This is the MoAD you see in filmmaker Barry Jenkins's indie feature "Medicine for Melancholy," an institution leaning more towards anthropology, history, travails and accomplishments. But when Linda Harrison came on as executive director in 2013, she shifted the museum to center contemporary Black artists. Without changing its name, MoAD came into its own as essentially the Museum of the African Art Diaspora."
Since opening in 2005, a three-story photomosaic by Chester Higgins titled "The Girl from Ghana" has served as the museum's signature image, composed of more than 3,000 small photographs from global contributors. The mosaic emphasizes variety within the African diasporic population rather than a monolithic identity. The museum occupies the first three stories of the St. Regis Hotel and marked its 20th anniversary with public celebrations and two exhibitions, "Continuum: MoAD Over Time" and "UNBOUND: Art, Blackness and the Universe." Leadership changes in 2013 and 2019 shifted focus toward contemporary Black artists and elevated exhibition ambition and innovation.
Read at Mission Local
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]