MoMA traces how artists across Africa transformed the struggle for independence into radical visions of nationhood, liberation and cultural possibility.
2 September 2026
What does freedom look like when it is not simply won, but imagined into being?
Opening at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, ‘Freedom and Futures: Emancipatory Art in Africa, 1956–1982’ revisits a transformative period in African modernism, placing artists at the centre of the continent’s struggles for independence, decolonisation and political self-determination.
Spanning the pivotal decades between 1956 and 1982, the exhibition considers how artists understood their roles within the emerging cultural and political landscapes of newly independent nations. Art becomes more than a witness here. It emerges as a language through which ideas of citizenship, identity, solidarity and possible futures could be negotiated.
Anchored by historic congresses and festivals in Zimbabwe, Senegal, Algeria, Nigeria and South Africa, ‘Freedom and Futures’ connects nationalism with transnational exchange, revealing the networks of artists and thinkers that shaped wider liberation movements. Works by figures including Malangatana Valente Ngwenya, Uche Okeke, Mohammed Khadda, Thomas Mukarobgwa and Amadou Seck illuminate the urgency and imagination of the period.
Organised by Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi with Erica DiBenedetto, the exhibition offers a compelling reconsideration of African modernism through the artists who envisioned freedom not only as political transformation, but as a cultural future still being made.
This exhibition will be on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 2 May to 14 August 2027.
