Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination opens at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, presenting a groundbreaking photographic exhibition that explores portraiture as a vehicle for political imagination and Pan-African solidarity. On view through July 25, 2026, in the Paul J. Sachs Galleries on the museum’s second floor, the show brings together powerful images from Central and West Africa created during a pivotal mid-20th-century moment of decolonial change and global civil rights movements.
Ideas of Africa examines how photographers and their subjects contributed to the construction of Africa as a political idea. Featuring striking works by Jean Depara, Seydou Keïta, Malick Sidibé, and Sanlé Sory, the exhibition highlights portraits of everyday citizens, vibrant music scenes, and youth culture in cities such as Bamako, Bobo-Dioulasso, and Kinshasa. These images reflect a continent in transformation and assert the creative agency of those depicted.
The exhibition also spotlights photographers like James Barnor and Kwame Brathwaite, whose work in Europe and North America broadened the reach of African visual culture and helped shape global perceptions of identity, community, and resistance. Their contributions reveal a transnational dimension of photographic practice, connecting local experience with diasporic currents and political solidarity.
Contemporary works by artists including Samuel Fosso, Silvia Rosi, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby demonstrate the continuing resonance of these themes today. Their pieces engage with questions of self-representation, memory, and cultural continuity, underscoring portraiture’s enduring potential to articulate political imagination across generations and geographies.
Organized by Oluremi C. Onabanjo, The Peter Schub Curator in the Department of Photography, with the assistance of Chiara M. Mannarino, the exhibition emphasizes photography’s role not just as a documentary medium, but as a collaborative act of creativity and political expression. Ideas of Africa invites visitors to reconsider familiar genres of portraiture through the lens of historical struggle, artistic innovation, and collective vision.
Public programming accompanying the exhibition includes talks, audio guides, and gallery experiences that deepen engagement with the works on display. Leadership funding is provided by the Jon Stryker Endowment Fund, with major support from The International Council of MoMA, Denise Littlefield Sobel, Jerry Speyer and Katherine Farley, and The Black Arts Council, among others.
MoMA – The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street
NY 10019-5497 New York
14 Dec 2025 – 25 Jul 2026
