The Brooklyn Museum has announced a $13 million reform to create new permanent galleries of African Art, slated to open in 2027. At the heart of this transformation is South African curator Ernestine White-Mifetu, who is reshaping how one of the largest collections of African art in the United States communicates with global audiences and diaspora communities.
White-Mifetu was the first Black person to lead the William Humphreys Art Gallery in South Africa. In addition, in 2022, she was appointed curator of the Sills Foundation for African Art at the Brooklyn Museum. She is expected to introduce a broad and nuanced African perspective to one of the most important African art collections in the U.S.
Focused on the biographies of the objects, White-Mifetu, along with associate curator Annissa Malvoisin and curatorial assistant Yara Doumani, dedicated two years to researching the complete history of the pieces in the collection. Furthermore, this research underpins a curatorial framework that recenters African and Afro-diasporic perspectives rather than the traditional classifications of Western art history.
The galleries will exhibit more than 300 works spanning from antiquity to the present day. Specifically, the installation dissolves the false historical-artistic distinction between Egypt and the rest of Africa, reconnecting the Art of Africa collection with the Egyptian holdings through a reopened 1897 enfilade. In addition, the galleries will present ancient Meroitic ceramics, Ethiopian processional crosses, as well as contemporary works, organized by geographic origin rather than colonial categories.
White-Mifetu’s curatorial decisions address fundamental questions such as: Who represents African art globally? Furthermore, the way these objects are framed, labeled, and contextualized shapes public understanding and determines how African cultural production is perceived on the global stage.
Written by Eduardo Quive
