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Help the Hampton University Museum win up to $1,000 in funds to conserve Francis Musangogwantamu’s “Christ in the Manger” through the Virginia Association of Museum’s Top 10 Endangered Artifacts program!
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“Christ in the Manger” by Francis Musangogwantamu was donated to the Hampton University Museum by The Harmon Foundation in 1967. The Harmon Foundation was an organization based in New York City that supported and promoted the work of African and African American artists. For example, Musangogwantamu had his designs for a mural in a Catholic Cathedral rejected because he depicted Christ as an African man instead of a white man. In response to the notion that Christ could not be African, Musangogwantamu asked, “I wonder…if Christ is not universal?” This piece is meant for black Africans to see themselves in a religion that usually excludes them in its art. The message he is spreading is if we are all made in God’s image, there is no reason Christ cannot be depicted as African.
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Sankofa: Constructing Modern African Art
On view Spring-Summer 2024
New Wing, Hampton University Museum
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Sankofa: Constructing Modern African Art features more than 40 artworks by 30 artists from 11 countries, including Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and the United States. This exhibition captures how Modern African artists utilized the past (traditional values and cultural heritage of the pre-colonial era) to construct their versions of Modern African art. Although there were numerous beliefs on what a new African art aesthetic should do, see, and feel like, a common thread was a return to the sources, which was the act of reclaiming and rehabilitating African cultures desecrated by colonization. Artists reclaimed the past for the future of African art by utilizing Indigenous art forms to construct art for the age of African independence and globalization. They also presented the unique beauty of the African landscape and its numerous ethnic cultures, birthing new artistic identities formed by deeper connections to their own or foreign cultural heritage.
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The Hampton University Museum is located in the Huntington Building on the Hampton University campus and is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free. Learn more.
757.727.5308
Fax 757.727.5170
Archives 757.727.5374
Monday–Friday: 8am–5pm
Saturday, Sunday, and all Major Holidays: Closed
Archives are closed on Saturday
Hampton University Museum and Archives
14 Frissell Avenue
Hampton, VA 23668
Hampton University Museum
200 William R. Harvey Way
Hampton University
Hampton, VA 23668