[3] He was awarded "Curator of Year" by the Royal Photographic Society in 2021,[4] and included on the ArtReview list of the 100 most powerful people of the art world in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
[13] In 2018, he curated the exhibition 'Colomental' at the Staatliche Museen which explored ideas to expand a Museum's scope beyond Western notions and how to incorporate trans-cultural and non-Western artistic tendencies.
The exhibition series explored the regenerative potential of art across the African continent and its diasporas by shifting the decolonial paradigm away from Western museums.
[21] In 2022, Azu Nwagbogu was appointed as one of the first curators of Buro Stedelijk, a new platform for contemporary African art based in Amsterdam.
[22] In 2023, he was named 'Explorer at Large' by the National Geographic Society, recognizing his commitment to documenting the world's diverse cultures and environments.
[24][25] The 2024 pavilion will address questions of restitution with site-specific artworks by artists Romuald Hazoumé, Chloe Quenum, Ishola Akpo and Moufoli Bello.
[27] Nwagbogu has explained that the pavilion is an extension of the 2022 exhibition 'The Art of Benin of Yesterday and Today: from Restitution to Revelation', which presented 26 Beninois objects looted by the French army in 1892 but eventually returned to the country by France's Quai Branly Museum.