Below is a list of some major traditional African art museums, including their official URLs and links to some of their most spectacular or a notable objects in their collections thaat has catched my eye. Note that I added direct links to specific objects of my favorite African art figures and masks where possible. Also I know I may have missed some of your favourite African Art museums in the list (like the Brooklyn museum or the MIA museum, etc.. ), but hey you have a choice to make. Let me know if you know something I should know that is better than the list below.
1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, USA)
- Website: https://www.metmuseum.org New York's prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art wants to offer its millions of visitors a less Western-centered view of the world, a shift that will highlight works from Africa and the continent's 3,000 years of cultural history. After spending tens of millions on renovations, the Met in spring 2025 will reopen its Michael C. Rockefeller wing, which houses not just African art but also works from the South Pacific and the early Americas.
- Highlight: Bamana Ci Wara Headdress
A stunning example of Bamana artistry, representing the antelope spirit in agricultural rituals.
2. Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac (Paris, France)
- Website: https://www.quaibranly.fr/en/explore-collections/
- Highlight: Fang Betsi Reliquary Guardian Figure Eyema byeri
A powerful sculpture from the Fang Betsi people from Gabon. Used as part of ancestral worship, they sat atop the cylindrical bark boxes that contained the reliquaries of the most illustrious ancestors in the lineage. . Height 42 cm.
3. British Museum (London, UK)
- Website: https://www.britishmuseum.org
- Highlight: Benin Bronzes
- Benin plaque British museum XVIth century. height 51 cm
- A collection of brass plaques and sculptures from the Kingdom of Benin. The Benin Bronzes are a group of several thousand metal plaques and sculptures that decorated the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, in what is now Edo State, Nigeria. but also known because these objects where looted during the punitive military expedition in 1897, after the massacre of an unarmed party of British envoys and a large number of their African bearers in January 1897 who wanted to stop the slavery business . The Punitive Expedition of february 1897 . During this 3-week campaign, the British machine-gunned, bombarded, and torched villages and towns, and indiscriminately massacred countless Edo people, the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Benin (and present-day Edo State) and dimantles the palace bronzes and treasures before burning it . This makes that a lot of museums are repatriating their Benin Bronzes to Africa where a new museum is build around them. read more: https://african.business/2024/11/long-reads/museum-of-west-african-art-opens-with-a-bold-artistic-vision
4. Fowler Museum at UCLA (Los Angeles, USA)
In the past I sold some objects to this museum, they have some very good African Art objects and made some ood exhibitions around African art in the past,
The Fowler currently has about 1,300 works that were once held by Henri Pareyn, a prominent Belgian collector and dealer of African art in the early 20th century. Based in Antwerp, Henry Pareyn mostly dealt with material from Central Africa. He died in 1928, and his remaining holdings were sold at a prominent auction December 10-15, 1928. Most of the Fowler’s holdings from this auction come by way of Sir Henry S. Wellcome, a wealthy pharmaceutical entrepreneur, who attended the sale with three of his staff members from the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum (WHMM). Together they purchased 1,813 of the 1,997 lots for the WHMM collection in London. In 1965, the Wellcome Trust (formed after Wellcome’s death in 1936) dispersed about 30,000 works to the Fowler Museum at UCLA, including many works from Pareyn. |
- Website: https://fowler.ucla.edu/africa/
- Highlight: Luba. Half-figure. Note the bundle of medicines tucked into the hair. Many works of art by Luba-speaking peoples deployed both naturalism and power bundles as mutually reinforcing strategies to generate aura for the object and its owner. It is rare in Central Africa for power objects to be inherited, but the ease with which bundles could be removed and replaced may have facilitated the survival of admired sculptures serving as containers for spirit. Wood, iron, beads, fabric, organic materials. 32 cm high. Fowler Museum at UCLA, FMCH X65.7488. Gift of the Wellcome Trust.
5. National Museum of African Art (Washington, D.C., USA)
Home of the famous Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives on support of the study of the arts, cultures and history of Africa. The National Museum of African Art in Washington is dedicated to the collection, exhibition, conservation, and study of the arts of Africa. On exhibit are the finest examples of traditional and contemporary art from the entire continent of Africa.
- Website: https://africa.si.edu
- Highlight: Ogoni face mask Smithonian Museum Washington
A rare vibrant and elaborate blend of human and horned creature mask used in Ogoni ceremonies to honor important visitors and ritual performances for funerals and when yams were planted and harvested.

6. Africa Museum –Royal Museum for Central Africa (Tervuren, Belgium)
The Royal Museum for Central Africa at Tervuren just outside of Brussels, communicating under the name AfricaMuseum since 2018, is one of the largest ethnography and natural history museum in the world with more than 200,000 items. The origins of the AfricaMuseum are closely linked to the Brussels World Exhibition of 1897. At the request of King Leopold II, a ‘Colonial Section’ was organised in Tervuren to convince the Belgian population and investors of his colonial project in Congo.
- Website: https://www.africamuseum.be
- Highlight: A Songye statue from the collection of of Jeanne Walschot (1896-1977) collected before 1930.
This Songye piece entered the museum's collections in 1980 as a result of a bequest by the Brussels dealer and collector Jeanne Walschot following her death in 1977. The 3000 objects collection was amassed by Walschot in Belgium throughout the 20th century, from the First World War until the early 1970s.
The Songye statue from the collection of of Jeanne Walschot inside here house.
EO.1980.2.492, photo J. Van de Vyver, RMCA Tervuren ©
7. The Vatican Ethnology museum (Vatican City, Italy)
Currently over 80,000 objects and works of art are held in the Ethnological Museum. The collection is extremely varied: it ranges from thousands of prehistoric artefacts from all over the world and dating from over two million years ago, to the gifts given to the current Pontiff; from evidence of the great Asian spiritual traditions, to those of the pre-Columbian and Islamic civilisations; from the work of African populations to that of the inhabitants of Oceania and Australia, and the indigenous peoples of America. In 1925 Pope Pius XI organised a major event: the Vatican Exposition, to make known the cultural, artistic and spiritual traditions of all peoples. The great success of the Exposition, which displayed more than 100,000 objects and works of art from all over the world to more than a million visitors, convinced the Pontiff to transform the temporary event into a permanent exhibition. Thus the Missionary Ethnological Museum was born; it was housed in the Lateran Palace until its transfer, at the beginning of the 1970s, to its current home within the Vatican Museums.
- Website: https://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/reparti/reparto-raccolte-etnologiche.html
- Highlight: Kota figure Mbulu-ngulu guardian of relics, Kota people, Gabon, now in Vatican Ethnology Museum, Vatican City, Italy. Height: 60 cm
8. Museum Rietberg (Zurich, Switzerland)
The African collections contain 2,400 items, mostly from West and Central Africa, and encompasses more than 600 years of the history of the African continent. Masks, figures, and items for ceremonial or everyday use made of wood, metal, pottery, or textiles reflect the whole range of materials and forms. Certain masks and sculptures, for instance those from Côte d’Ivoire or Gabon, are among the icons of African art. In the tradition of the German art anthropologist Hans Himmelheber, attention has focused on individual artistry as far as new acquisitions and exhibitions are concerned. His personal collection of over 750 items only recently found a new home in the Rietberg museum. The photographic estates of scholars such as Alice Boner, Hans Himmelheber, and Elsy Leuzinger represent another important part of the Rietberg collection.
- Website: https://www.rietberg.ch
- Highlight: Afrikanische Holzskulptur Ancestor figure of a master at the Bamum court in Fumban, Cameroon; 18/19th century. Wood, iron nails. Museum Rietberg, Zurich. The Bamun figure was photographed in New York in 1935 by Walker Evans (1903–1975) for the «African Negro Art»exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Gelatin Silver Print 24.4 x 19.3 cm
9. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, USA)
MFAH Arts of Africa galleries . “African” describes art from the diverse continent of Africa from 500 BC to the present. The Museum's African art collection features masks, sculptures, headdresses, textiles, and objects from a variety of regions, cultures, and countries. Masterpieces include a refined cast-metal head of a king from the Court of Benin, and a Fang culture reliquary figure that inspired early-20th-century artists. Many artworks were created to reinforce the rank and prestige of rulers, or to indicate status. Others honor ancestors.
- Website: https://www.mfah.org
- Highlight: A Fang peoples, Betsi group Fang Reliquary Head
This sculpted head is a masterwork of African art. The Fang peoples believed that the head was the center of intelligence and consciousness, and the artist embodied this belief in his sculpture. The Fang created reliquaries to preserve the bones of the deceased and provide links between past and present generations. The bones were placed in bark containers or bound in fiber packets.
This reliquary was purchased in 1935 by American abstract painter John P. Anderson, who cherished it until his death in 1999. Its elegant features and intense stare, accentuated by brass disc inserts, one now lost, create a strong and hypnotic presence. The large, rounded forehead contrasts with the length and flatness of the hair and neck in sculptural balance. The base was made by Inagaki, a Japanese woodworker who lived in Paris and was known for his elegant wooden supports carved during the early 20th century for collectors of African art.
10. Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, USA)
Pan-Africanism, first named and theorized around 1900, is commonly regarded as an umbrella term for political movements that have advanced the call for both individual self-determination and global solidarity among peoples of African descent. It has yet to be fully examined as a worldview that takes its force from art and culture.
As the first major exhibition to survey Pan-Africanism’s cultural manifestations, Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica gathers together some 350 objects, spanning the 1920s to the present, made by artists on four continents: Africa, North and South America, and Europe. Panafrica, the promised land named in the exhibition title, is presented as a conceptual place where arguments about decolonization, solidarity, and freedom are advanced and negotiated with the aim of an emancipatory future.
- Website: https://www.artic.edu
Highlight: The Chief- He Who Sold Africa to the Colonist from the series Tati, 2008 Samuel Fosso
The Art Institute of Chicago, promised gift of Isabel S. Wilcox. Courtesy of Jean-Marc Patras Gallery, Paris. © Samuel Fosso
11. Ethnological Museum of Berlin (Berlin, Germany)
The Ethnological Museum of Berlin (German: Ethnologisches Museum Berlin) is one of the Berlin State Museums (German: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), the de facto national collection of the Federal Republic of Germany. It is presently located in the Humboldt Forum in Mitte, along with the Museum of Asian Art (German: Museum für Asiatische Kunst). The museum holds more than 500,000 objects and is one of the largest and most important collections of works of art and culture from outside Europe in the world. Their most famous object is the Throne of King Nsangu of Bamum (‘Mandu Yenu')
- Website: https://www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/ethnologisches-museum/home/
- Highlight: Bangwa king with twins.
Male figure with twins. Cameroon, Bangwa. Wood. 89 cm. 19th century (Berlin Ethnological Museum) (Cf. Hans-Joachim Koloss (ed.), “Männliche Figur mit Zwillingen”, in Afrika. Kunst and Kultur. Meisterwerke afrikanischer Kunst. Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin, Prestel, München, London, New York, 1999, p. 211)
12. Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada)
The Museum of Anthropology at UBC’s even if mostly known for the impressive British Colombia collections they boasts over 5,000 objects from Africa. Featuring African masks, puppets, figurative sculpture, textiles and paintings, the museum establishes a dialogue between different aspects and ways of interpreting the continent’s rich and diverse art forms. They did some interesting provenance research of some of the pieces in their collection.
- Website: https://moa.ubc.ca
- Highlight: Kamba Figure from Kenya by Mutisya Munge. MOA Collection K4.190. Front photographed by Alina Ilyasova -Profile photo by Rebecca Pasch.
A couple of similar sculptures exist in London. They were all produced by a carver called Mutisya Munge, who had been a soldier. Munge’s work was commissioned and presented to the Duke of Gloucester, and that’s how those pieces ultimately ended up at the British Museum. Three more pieces were presented to the Anglican Archbishop of Nairobi, and then ended up with a private collector, who donated them to MOA in 1966. Two of these sculptures (the other is K4.189) are among the very few pieces of African war art from the Great War anywhere in the world.
13. Yale University African Art Gallery (, )
In the past I sold an interesting Mende figure to this museum, with a textile and a painting representing the first women anthropologist from Yale with the statue and a textile.
The African art at the Yale University Art Gallery presents objects from Africa’s earliest cultures along with pieces that inspired modernist artists like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.
The installation presents more than 250 objects, spanning 3,000 years, including sculpture, ceramics, masks, ivory carvings, and metalwork
- Website: https://macmillan.yale.edu/africa/new-location-and-new-focus-yales-african-art-collection
- Highlight: This 2 meter High monumental Urhobo Maternity figure of a nursing mother was part of a shrine that honored the founding ancestors of the Urhobo people.

14. Museum of African Art (New York, USA) (named today The Africa Center)
The Africa Center, formerly known as the Museum for African Art and before that as the Center for African Art, is a museum located at Fifth Avenue and 110th Street in East Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, near the northern end of Fifth Avenue's Museum Mile.
- Website: https://theafricacenter.org/
- Highlight: In the past they made a lot of interesting books and catalogs related to African Art, many of them are considered as classics needed in every good collectors library. A ritual object FREE ONLINE AFRICAN ART BOOKS HERE https://theafricacenter.org/archives . A few years back I visited them and they had an amazing Olowe of Ise (Yoruba, ca. 1873–1938) cup holder on show.
I hope you enjoyed my virtual travel among some of my favorite museums with African art. These links should help you explore the collections and learn more about the incredible diversity of traditional African art.
David Norden.
P.S.: Next week I'll show you objects from my online African Shop