There is an institutional and cultural reckoning with legacies of racism, oppression, and inequity unfolding within and around global art institutions. COVID-19 forced the mass closure of museums and staff layoffs, exposing the inequalities of the art world and raising questions about the role of museums as institutions of care. The continual and unjust killing of black people by police (especially in the United States), and the widespread protests and calls to action that resulted, have only heightened concerns over the staffing, exhibiting, and collecting practices of the global art market. Longstanding calls for dismantling exclusionary practices and the need to reimagine museums have gained new urgency.

The continent of Africa and the disciplinary field of African art is no stranger to discussions of racism, institutional imagination, and calls for decolonization. Before the pandemic and protests, the Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy Report (commissioned by the French government; Sarr is a Senegalese economist and musician and Savoy a French art historian) called for the return of African artworks held in French museum collections. In tandem, artists and curators based on the continent and in the diaspora spearheaded a number of pathbreaking exhibition platforms that challenged how people think about African art as a field of study, and rethink the role of museums and curators. Africa Is a Country contributor Drew Thompson asked three prominent curators—Antawan Byrd (Associate Curator of Photography and Media, Art Institute of Chicago), Sandrine Colard (Assistant Professor of African Art History, Rutgers University, Newark), and Serubiri Moses (Writer and Adjunct Assistant Professor, Hunter College)—to  comment on how they are (re-)situating their respective curatorial practices in relation to the current moment.