Washington is about to get a joyful new reason to visit the National Mall. On Friday, November 6, 2026, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art opens New & Now: A Decade Building the National Collection of African Art, an ongoing exhibition that celebrates ten years of collecting — and shows, step by step, how and why a great museum grows.
Every work on view was acquired in the past decade, drawn from a collection of nearly 13,000 objects spanning more than 1,000 years of African creativity, from painting and sculpture to textiles, photography, pottery and fashion. The exhibition, curated by Kevin D. Dumouchelle, puts the stories behind the objects center stage: where each piece came from, why it matters, and how careful provenance research and ethical stewardship now guide every new acquisition.
Visitors will meet some of the most exciting voices in contemporary art. The museum holds the largest publicly held collection of 20th- and 21st-century African art in the United States, and New & Now features artists such as Adebunmi Gbadebo, Wangechi Mutu, Thania Petersen, Beya Gille Gacha, Damien Ajavon and Pamina Sebastião, alongside Phoebe Boswell’s moving pandemic-era drawing Notes on Lockdown: I Just Want To Be Touched Again. The oldest treasure in the show is a carved wooden bowl made in the 19th century by King Lewanika of the Lozi people, in what is now Zambia — a work created to share his kingdom’s culture with the world.
“New & Now gives visitors a better understanding of the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’ required to build our nation’s collection of African art,” said museum director John K. Lapiana. Happy City News readers can discover that “why” for free: the museum, at 950 Independence Avenue SW, is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., with no passes needed.
Photo: Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art — Nú Barreto, “La Source (Ètats Désunis d’Afrique)” (detail)
