The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a special exhibition highlighting the African works acquired by the New York avant-garde and its most influential patrons during the 1910s and 1920s. At the beginning of the 20th century, the appreciation of African artifacts in the West shifted dramatically from colonial trophies to modernist icons. Reflecting on New York's dynamism during the years that followed the 1913 Armory Show, African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde brings together African art from the collections of many key individuals of the period, now dispersed throughout private and institutional collections. Showcasing more than 60 works from Africa and the Western avant-garde, the exhibition evokes the original context in which they were first experienced simultaneously nearly a century ago. Highlights of the exhibition are 36 wood sculptures from West and Central Africa; they will be presented alongside photographs, sculptures, and paintings by Alfred Stieglitz, Charles Sheeler, Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia, Diego Rivera, Henri Matisse, and Constantin Brancusi.
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