ART COLLECTION

• The Mbanefo Foundation Art Collection comprises significant examples of classical, modern and contemporary African and African Diaspora art. It includes paintings, sculpture, ceramics, drawings, prints, and valuable numbers of textile and decorative arts whose provenance spans more than three centuries of African creative expression.
  
  
• The principal artworks in the Mbanefo Foundation art collection represent major directions in contemporary Nigerian art, including examples from notable pioneer modern Nigerian artists like Ben Enwonwu and Afi Ekong, and artworks from major masters of modern Nigerian art like Kolade Oshinowo, Josy Ajiboye, Ini Brown, Dele Jegede, Bruce Onobrakpeya, David Dale, Tayo Adenaike, and Ndidi Dike among others. The Mbanefo Foundation's expansive collection of figurative artworks from principal art movements in modern Nigerian art (from the Yaba, Zaria and Auchi Schools) is the most comprehensive collection of this aesthetic orientation in the United States. The Mbanefo Foundation Art Collection also includes artworks from other African countries, and premier examples of African American art from artists like Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, and Jean Michel Basquiat.
  
  
• The Mbanefo Foundation Art Collection also contains important examples of traditional African art including rare artworks from the Edo Kingdom of Benin, widely regarded as one of the great art traditions of the world. Additionally, the collection contains the title accoutrements of several generations of titleholders of the office of Odu of Onitsha, an important indigenous Nigerian kingdom, the earliest object of which dates to the 19th century. These title objects constitute a major art and cultural archive of the history of Onitsha traditional leadership and are priceless.