Architects of Liberation: MoMA's First Survey of Modernism in Western Africa

MoMA exhibition Architects of Liberation Modernism in Western Africa entrance view

MoMA is presenting Architects of Liberation: Modernism in Western Africa, its first major exhibition devoted to the architecture produced across the region between the late 1950s and the early 1980s. The show opened on 5th July and runs through 2nd January 2027 in the Robert B. Menschel Galleries on the museum's third floor.

The exhibition sets its frame around a specific historical moment. As nations across Benin, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Togo gained independence from colonial rule, their governments turned to architecture as one language among several, alongside music, dance, and the visual arts, for describing what a newly sovereign nation could look like. Schools, housing, trade fair pavilions, and civic buildings became sites where ideas of Pan-Africanism and what curators describe as "Africanization" took physical form.

What sets this show apart is the material itself. Drawing on four years of research, MoMA has brought together roughly 450 objects from more than 50 lenders across 17 countries, and the museum states that the vast majority have never been shown publicly before. Most of the architects featured have never appeared in a prior exhibition or scholarly publication. The show also includes newly commissioned models, a suite of new films, and a photographic portfolio by François-Xavier Gbré made specifically for the project.

Rather than moving country by country, the exhibition is organized around anchor projects that open onto broader categories, including cityscapes, education, and housing. Buildings referenced across the material include La Pyramide in Abidjan by Rinaldo Olivieri with engineer Riccardo Morandi; the International Trade Fair in Lagos by Zoran Bojović for Energoprojekt; and the Banque Ouest Africaine de Développement building in Lomé by Guy Durand, Yves Ménard, and Messan Raphaël Ekoué-Hagbonon. The show also points to the state design offices, such as the Ghana National Construction Corporation and Côte d'Ivoire's Bureau National d'Études Techniques et de Développement, that were created specifically to employ African and African-trained architects during this period.

The exhibition is organized by Martino Stierli, MoMA's Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, and Ikem Stanley Okoye, guest curator and associate professor at the University of Delaware, with Mallory Cohen as curatorial associate. Stierli has previously curated exhibitions on Yugoslav modernism and on architecture in South Asia after independence, so this exhibition continues a line of inquiry he has returned to more than once. Okoye's scholarship on West African art and architecture, and its connections to other regions shaped by colonial history, anchors the show's curatorial premise: that modernism here was not an import to be absorbed but a language that architects reshaped for their own political and climatic conditions.

Details:

Exhibition: Architects of Liberation: Modernism in Western Africa

Typology: Museum exhibition

Venue: The Museum of Modern Art, Robert B. Menschel Galleries, third floor

Location: New York, USA

Dates: 5th July 2026 – 2nd January 2027

Curators: Martino Stierli and Ikem Stanley Okoye, with Mallory Cohen

Countries featured: Benin, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo