Museum of African art · Senegal
Théodore Monod Museum of African Art, Dakar
The Théodore Monod Museum of African Art — long known as the IFAN Museum — stands on Place Soweto in central Dakar. It grew out of the research institute IFAN, founded in the 1930s, holds some 9,000 to 10,000 objects from across West Africa, and is one of the main venues of the Dakar Biennale.
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A museum born of a research institute
IFAN — first the Institut français, now the Institut fondamental d'Afrique noire — was created in Dakar in the late 1930s as the research institute of French West Africa; sources date it to 1936 or 1938. Its founding director was the French naturalist Théodore Monod (1902–2000). Its researchers collected across the region, and their collection became the institute's museum of African art. Today IFAN is part of Cheikh Anta Diop University, and in December 2007 the museum was renamed in Monod's honour; many people in Dakar still call it the IFAN museum.
The museum occupies a colonial building of 1931–32 on Place Soweto, in the Plateau, the centre of Dakar.
The collection
The collection numbers some 9,000 to 10,000 objects — one count gives 9,727 — from more than twenty African countries, most of them in West Africa. Some came in during the nineteenth century; others were gathered by IFAN's researchers for their studies:
- Masks and figures from the region's peoples, the heart of any visit; see African masks.
- Cloth, the region's woven and dyed textiles.
- Vessels and other objects of everyday and ritual life.
The museum shows only part of it at any time. When it reopened after renovation in May 2021, its curator called the collection unparalleled in Africa, and the reopening was celebrated as a return of art "back on African soil".
Biennale venue
The museum is one of the regular venues of Dak'Art, the Dakar Biennale of contemporary African art, so in biennale years its rooms can hold contemporary work among the old masks. The pairing has a history: the École de Dakar, the painters encouraged by Léopold Sédar Senghor after independence, looked to the same traditions as a source for modern art.
Visiting
Check opening hours locally. Dakar's other great museum, the Museum of Black Civilisations, opened in 2018 and tells a wider story of Black cultures worldwide; the two are best seen together.