ABSTRACT
The Museum of African Art (MAU) in Belgrade was established in 1977 to exhibit, explore, and research African culture and art to entrench Yugoslav and African nonaligned relations. However, the desire of state socialist countries to connect politics and cultures to the decolonized world waned in the 1970s when these nations opted to align their politics to Euro-American institutions and capitalist/democratic futures. Nevertheless, MAU continued to feature African art and culture and engage Blackness and Africanity beyond the colonial lens even after the demise of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. This chapter explores how the MAU continued to provide a platform to explore and elevate African art broadly and aspects of Blackness more generally. Specifically, it addresses how the content of three exhibit catalogs challenges European socioracial hierarchies and preferences. Rather than minimizing the aesthetic value of physical features of African diasporic people, the catalogs uplift and celebrate Black skin and hair—two prominent aspects of Blackness long considered irreconcilable with European norms. The MAU and these catalogs illustrate that aspects of Blackness can continue to be celebrated and appreciated well beyond their ability to signal solidarity. More importantly, perhaps, the exhibits, outreach, and collections at the MAU rebuke the normalizing lens of the West and offer alternative ways of viewing, documenting, and engaging Blackness.
