Visual Culture: NYC's African Art Center Forced To Scale Back Grand Design

During the Museum for African Art’s 17-year quest to evolve from a tiny SoHo outpost to a major presence on Fifth Avenue’s Museum Mile, it was forced to close its public galleries, move to a temporary home in Queens and, perhaps most significantly, change its identity.

Last summer, the trustees rechristened the art museum the Africa Center, in the hopes that they could attract new donors by expanding the mission to include policy and business; they had to reinvent the museum to save it. As its most recent tax return shows, the museum had to write off nearly $5 million in uncollected pledges in the fiscal year ending June 2013. Contributions, which had topped $7 million the previous year, dropped to less than $1 million.

That metamorphosis signaled a new chapter for a museum that began life in 1984 in a set of townhouses on the Upper East Side, and moved to SoHo in 1993. Four years later, Elsie McCabe Thompson, a Harvard-trained lawyer who had been chief of staff for Mayor David N. Dinkins, took charge. Ms. Thompson set her sights on moving the tiny museum and collection to 110th Street and Fifth Avenue, where it would occupy the bottom floors of a 19-story luxury condominium designed by Robert A. M. Stern.

Ms. Thompson, who later married the city comptroller and 2013 mayoral candidate William C. Thompson Jr., managed to raise an impressive $75 million, the museum said, more than $32 million of it in public funds and tax credits. She also steered the project — originally scheduled to open in 2009 — through several crises, including the exit of a development partner and engineering problems.

After the 2007 financial crash, fund-raising flagged, but Ms. Thompson refused to consider a cheaper design or a phased-in opening, explaining in May 2012, “Africa deserves the best that we could give it.”

Five months later, she announced her resignation, saying that she was looking for other opportunities.

Dennis Scholl, who oversees the Knight Foundation’s national arts programs, said that while he respected Ms. Thompson’s vision, “you have to match your vision to your resources.”

Now, instead of imported Etimoe wood, there will be ground and polished concrete; instead of 16,000 square feet of gallery space, there will be 9,600; and instead of $60 million more in donations, officials are looking for $20 million. The revision, however, offers something that the original did not: the possibility that it will actually be built.

The result is a stripped-down interior, designed by Gordon Kipping. Gone are the restaurant, classical theater and floor-wide galleries. Visitors will eventually find an African-themed cafe, an open-ceiling design and a phased-in opening beginning with public spaces on the first two floors.

“We’re doing it more modestly and more raw,” Mr. Kipping said. He explained that he was able to shave $15 million to $20 million by changing the finishes from wood to polished concrete and reducing the size of galleries that required sensitive environmental controls.

“We are being much more prudent,” Mr. Conte said. The new design includes multipurpose spaces that will allow for more varied fund-raisers.