Museums - Simmons Collection, African Arts Museum

The African Arts Museum was founded in 1976 and then expanded and relocated to its current location in 1986. It features approximately 400 sculptures from Africa, Brazil, and the South Pacific, as well as paintings and woven tapestries. The collection was acquired by the director and curator from 1970 to the present in the course of numerous travels to forty-four countries in Africa, the South Pacific, and South America, and is displayed in the context of a private, community-based museum. The collection includes West African masks, statuary of varying quality, and cast metal objects from various groups in West Africa, such as the Ashanti, Baule, Mossi, Tikar, Bamileke, Senufo, and Benin. There are approximately 200 objects on exhibit and 200 in storage. The latter is not accessible to the public.