LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS, NY.-The Museum for African Art presents Reflections: African Art Is…, on view through December 2005. The Museum for African Art was founded in 1984 to increase the understanding and appreciation of Africa’s ancient and modern cultures. It is the only independent institution in the United States devoted to organizing and circulating exhibitions of traditional and contemporary African art of the highest aesthetic and scholarly quality. Additionally, the Museum is a major publisher of books on African art, and presents educational programs, lectures, workshops, and performances for children, students, and adults.

Over the past twenty years, the Museum for African Art has explored various approaches in fulfilling its mission: to make African art accessible to many different audiences, helping them to feel this work both emotionally and sensually and to understand it intellectually. Past exhibitions have suggested that African art can be viewed as “…part of everyday life”; “…a way to communicate with the spirits”; “…a reflection of an artist’s vision”; and a range of other proposals. These varied and sometimes contradictory approaches have created new ways to understand and appreciate a body of art that is moving and immediate but that also makes special demands on Western audiences.

Reflections: African Art Is… continues this tradition by presenting African Art in a way that provides new insight into the works, while revisiting past themes presented by the Museum.