About us

“It was a great pleasure for me to visit the Museum of African Art in Belgrade. So many forms of sheer beauty to be contemplated, so many signs to be understood, so many tracks and traces to be followed through the Dogon country, the Ashanti lands, the Bambara territories – to mention only a few of the areas represented in this generous display. I remember being particularly attracted by certain bird-figures characteristic of the Ivory Coast’s Senufo culture. All those forms, all those signs, all those tracks . . . Long live a sense of deep culture in the world! And maybe, thanks to institutions such as this, we can go, step by step, towards a sense of multibased, variedly localized world culture.”

Kenneth White, poet and writer, professor of the 20th century poetics at Paris Sorbonne,
Founder of the International Institute of Geopoetics
From the catalogue “Magic, tradition, and the contemporary“,
Museum of African Art, 1997.

Museum exhibition "Bird Motif in African Art"

The Museum of African Art is the one and only museum in the region of South East Europe that is wholly dedicated to the arts and cultures of the African continent. By expert assessment the African collection of the Museum is qualified as representative.

Aside from the permanent display, which mainly features the traditional arts of west Africa, the Museum organizes changing exhibitions as a way of presenting the most important segments of traditional and contemporary African art. The purpose of the exhibitions, as well as a diverse range of programs, is to cover not only west Africa, but also the other regions that are underrepresented by the material from the museum collection – north, east, central and south Africa.

Capoeira dance in front of the Museum

The presentation of Africa’s cultural heritage is realized in the form of exhibitions, lectures, film and video screenings, art and music workshops. Publishing is an important activity of the Museum which includes exhibition catalogues, scholarly books, program brochures, as well as an annual journal Afrika – Journal of the Museum of African Art. The Museum is also an important documentation center, in that it archives photographic, audio, video and film records.

World music star Habib Coite at the Museum of African Art

The Museum of African Art takes part in various cultural programs and festivals that are on offer in Belgrade: BELEF – Belgrade Summer Festival, BEMUS – Belgrade Music Festivities, Days of Belgrade organized by the City of Belgrade, museum initiatives such as the Museum Night or the ICOM symposia, the Month of Francophonie organized by the French Cultural Center in Belgrade, events of the Goethe Institut in Belgrade, etc.

The quality and number of the Museum of African Art productions are reflected not only in the Museum’s activities and exhibitions, but also in the continuing and intensive educational, scientific and research work, distinguishing this institution as an important factor in the cultural life of Belgrade and the wider region.