Its collections include 9,000 works of traditional and contemporary African art from both Sub-Saharan and North Africa, 300,000 photographs, and 50,000 library volumes.

The collection focused on traditional African art and an educational mission to teach black cultural heritage.

In the late 1950s, American Foreign Service officer Warren M. Robbins purchased 32 pieces of African art in antique shops near Hamburg, Germany.

Money raised by the Center for Cross Cultural Communication enabled Robbins to found the Museum of African Art.

[3] Under Robbins's tenure, the museum focused on traditional African art and its educational mission to teach black cultural heritage.

Later that year, the Smithsonian broke ground on a new, dedicated building for the African art museum on the National Mall.

[6][3][2] Over time, perspectives towards African art shifted from ethnographic interest to the study of traditional objects for their craftsmanship and aesthetic properties.

[4] Williams took a scholarly, art historian approach to the museum and pursued risky, high-cost pieces before their ultimate values were settled.

[11][12] Her tenure included more shows targeting children and an advisory board mass resignation over Smithsonian leadership.

Her tenure became associated with a controversial 2015 exhibit that featured works from comedian Bill Cosby's private collection just as allegations of sexual assault against him became public.

[18][19]The museum was scheduled for remodeling as part of the Smithsonian's South Mall project starting in 2014, but plans were subsequently scaled back.

[20] As of the late 2000s, The Washington Post wrote that the museum struggled with low attendance, modest budget, concealed location, and leadership turnovers.

The project, which also included the Sackler Gallery for the Smithsonian's Asian art, created 368,000 square feet of exhibition space[1] at the cost of $73.2 million,[22][6] half of which from the federal government.

[7] Almost all of this room was created underground so as not to affect the quadrangle's landmark Smithsonian Institution Building (the Castle), its greenery, or its view.

[12] The quadrangle project's design architect was Jean-Paul Carlhian of Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbott, based on a concept by Junzō Yoshimura.

[6] The African art and Sackler buildings were built as twin pavilions, each one story above ground and with similar display space: five galleries each, and only one with natural light.

The objects range from 15th-century sculptures and masks to multimedia contemporary art, and the photographs include significant contributions from photojournalists Eliot Elisofon and Constance Stuart Larrabee.

[1] This original collection focused on Sub-Saharan Africa,[27] with better representation of the Guinea coast and Western Sudan than the Central African region.

Some early highlights of the museum's collection include an Edo–Portuguese ivory spoon and an Akan gold pendant bequeathed by the Robert Woods Bliss estate.

[10] In 2005, the museum received the Walt Disney-Tishman Collection of 525 works spanning most major African art styles and 75 cultures.

[21] The museum's library also grew upon joining the Smithsonian, from 3,000 to 30,000 volumes in visual arts, anthropology, cooking, history, religion, and travel, especially works published in Africa.

[5] At the opening of the National Mall building, the museum showed 375 works in five small- and mid-sized exhibits with survey and single-theme scopes.

The remaining three exhibits were smaller: West African textiles, Benin sculptures, and copper reliefs, and useful objects like baskets, hairpins, and snuff boxes.

[10] Walker organized a 1998 retrospective of Yoruba sculptor Olowe of Ise, a rare example of a single-person African art show.

[35] Exhibitions aimed towards children, such as "Playful Performers", drew crowds under Patton's directorship in the mid-2000s, as did "Treasures" shows from the museum's collection and artist visits.

[36] In 2013, the museum received its largest gift, $1.8 million from Oman, towards a series that focuses on arts from the country and its links to cultures in the Near East.

[37] The 2015 "Conversations: African and African-American Artworks in Dialogue", featuring works from the private collection of Bill and Camille Cosby, became controversial for opening just as allegations of sexual assault against him became public.

[5] In the early 1980s, the Smithsonian found that few of its 20 million annual visitors were of a racial minority despite the city's large black population.

[13] At the National Mall building's opening, three New York Times reviewers criticized its design elements, namely the architect's choice of materials and lack of natural light underground.

[6] The opening exhibits, overall, piqued viewer curiosity in the subject and underscored the importance of religious belief and craftsmanship in the displayed works.