This year’s Spring Festival: New African Masquerades featured a scavenger hunt across the New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations and Afropolitan: Contemporary African Arts at NOMA exhibitions, as well as our African Art Gallery. This activity is now available for free online as a PDF.
Dive into the worlds of these two fantastic exhibits and our African art gallery, and explore thematic and artistic connections between African artworks across NOMA’s galleries.
About the Featured Exhibitions and the African Art Gallery
New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations
On view at NOMA until August 10, 2025, spotlights the work of four contemporary artists working in cities across West Africa: Chief Ekpenyong Bassey Nsa, Sheku “Goldenfinger” Fofanah, David Sanou, and Hervé Youmbi. The first presentation of its kind, New African Masquerades offers a rare look into contemporary West African masquerade by contextualizing the works of individual artists within a range of social, economic, and religious practices and examining their networks of viewership and exchange.
Learn more about New African Masquerades
Afropolitan: Contemporary African Arts at NOMA
On view at NOMA until December 28th, 2025, Afropolitan highlights some of the most pioneering African artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the museum’s collection. New mediums and expressions added to the African art collection are juxtaposed with significant artists of the pre- and post-independence period, and reflect important art schools or workshops on the continent.
African Art Gallery
Housed on the third floor of the museum, NOMA’s African Art Gallery features a blend of architectural adornments, musical instruments, ritual objects, clothing, painting, and photography. This gallery is among the first municipal African art galleries in the United States and currently houses a number of works of the Afropolitan exhibition.