Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination

Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination opens at The Pulitzer Arts Foundation on March 5, 2027, and runs through August 8. It's a collection of photographic portraits from Central and West Africa, and it's coming to St. Louis after a long run at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, where it was on view from December 14, 2025, to July 25, 2026.

The show looks at how photographers and their subjects helped circulate Pan-African solidarity during the mid-20th century, pulling together striking pictures taken in Central and West African cities. The portraits are the center of it—faces and figures from a period when the idea of a connected, Pan-African identity was being actively imagined and shared across borders. It's as much about the people in the photos as it is about the photographers who captured them.

The lineup of artists is wide, spanning several decades and regions. You'll see work by Jean Depara, Seydou Keïta, Malick Sidibé, Sanlé Sory, James Barnor, Kwame Brathwaite, Samuel Fosso, Silvia Rosi, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby. The exhibition was organized by Oluremi C. Onabanjo, with assistance from Chiara M. Mannarino and facilitated by assistant curator Heather Alexis Smith.

Since it's a traveling show, this is the first time these images are being gathered here in St. Louis. It runs from March 5 to August 8, 2027, at The Pulitzer Arts Foundation.