National Museum of African Art

About

In 1964, former U.S. foreign service officer Warren M. Robbins founds the Museum of African Art at the Frederick Douglass House on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. On October 5, 1978, Congress passes legislation transferring the museum to the Smithsonian Institution, and the transfer is completed on August 13, 1979, when the collection numbers about 8,000 objects. The museum is officially renamed the National Museum of African Art in 1981. On September 28, 1987, it reopens in a new building near the National Mall, part of the Smithsonian's Quadrangle complex. Built at a cost of $73.2 million, the structure sits 96 percent underground, with the Enid A. Haupt Victorian Garden on its roof. Today the collection includes about 9,000 works of traditional and contemporary African art, 300,000 photographs, and 50,000 library volumes — making it the smallest of the Smithsonian's museums.