Brooklyn Museum Combines African, Indigenous, Asian, Islamic, and Women’s Art with Community

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About the Brooklyn Museum

The Museum is an 1897 Beaux-Arts building. Originally intended to be the world’s largest art museum, it was designed by legendary New York City architects McKim, Mead and White.

First Saturdays

First Saturdays (except in September) are sort of a cultural block party. The Museum stays open late and hosts multicultural performing arts.

Jean-Michel Basquiat

A Haitian-Puerto Rican New Yorker, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) was the first international Black art star. In 2017, his “Untitled” (1982) set auction records for an American artist, a Black artist, and Contemporary art.

Basquiat’s interest in art came from his mother. As a child, she used to take him regularly to the Brooklyn Museum. The moral of the story is take your kids to the Museum!

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Brooklyn Museum Collections

The Museum is known for its collection of African art and Art of the Americas. Much of the collection can be viewed online.

Arts of Africa

The Museum started collecting African art in 1900. An expansion of the collection with objects from what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo led to the African Art Exhibition of 1923, one of the first exhibitions of African art in the United States.

Arts of the Americas

The Arts of the Americas collection includes Indigenous Pre-Columbian art. It was started in 1903 with a focus on Native American art.

In 1929, the second curator focused on art of Central and South America. There is important Mexican stonework and Costa Rican ceramics. The collection of Paracas textiles from Peru is one of the most important outside of Peru.

The Spanish colonial art collection is world class. The Museum is now adding contemporary work.

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Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art

The Center produces excellent exhibitions of women’s art. Yes, it’s the Sackler family that created the U.S. opioid crisis. Supposedly Elizabeth is from a different branch of that family. Anyway, the curation is excellent.

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