After guiding The Africa Center through rocky pandemic years and securing a huge chunk of funding for a major construction project, the leader of the Harlem institution is stepping down.
Uzodinma Iweala, who is in his seventh year as chief executive of the Africa Center, will depart at the end of 2024.
Iweala’s leadership helped to settle an institution with a tumultuous past of various mandates, locations and even names. It was formerly known as the Museum for African Art, which The New York Times’s co-chief art critic, Holland Cotter, called the “source of some of the most conceptually daring exhibitions of its era,” and before that, the Center for African Art. Faced with a delayed opening date during the pandemic, Iweala expanded its programming to include lectures and visits from heads of state, outdoor dance parties, films and author talks. All of it was aimed at connecting with the African diaspora and changing the way Americans interact with the African continent.
Iweala, who as a writer and medical doctor has a nontraditional background for an arts institution leader, said he planned to focus on new creative projects including finishing a book. His multifaceted background and personal history — he is Nigerian-American and has lived in Nigeria — were regarded by many in the arts community as a good fit for an institution trying to transform itself into more than a museum or gallery. In an interview last year, the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Thelma Golden called him “visionary.”
“I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to build over the past few years, especially in a challenging environment,” Iweala said. “It’s the right time to leave for me and for the institution.”
Under Iweala, the Center has partnered with the Museum of Food and Drink on an exhibition as well as independent curators to offer “States of Becoming,” a 2022-23 exhibition that featured 17 African artists from the continent and diaspora. He partnered with the University of Cape Town to help organize a media index to track how Africa is covered in the media and created the Future Africa Forum that offered discussions with presidents, philanthropists and other leaders during the U.N. General Assembly meetings in New York.
Throughout its history, the Africa Center has hit many snags with leadership turnovers, construction problems, delayed openings and pledges that fell through. Five years after moving into the space inside the Center’s Robert A.M. Stern-designed tower, at 1280 Fifth Avenue, it only partially occupies the space allotted for it. (It was ready to open to the public in 2020, but the pandemic pushed its opening until 2022.)
Officials have been raising money to build out the rest of the space.
In November, the Center got a boost when New York City’s cultural affairs department announced new funding of $7 million aimed at helping the Center with its headquarters.
Including the new funding, New York City has invested $11 million toward new construction at the Center, where it moved in more than a decade ago. The 70,000-square-foot space situated at the top of Museum Mile includes 17 floors of luxury condos.
In addition to the funding from the city, the Center has raised another $6 million from donations from the Dangote Foundation, named for the Nigerian cement magnate; the Rockefeller Foundation; the Mellon Foundation; Open Society; and others.
The money it has raised for construction that would finish the atrium and connect it to other spaces is shy of the estimated $20 million it needs, but the Center’s officials said more donations are close to being finalized.
“It’s not an insurmountable gap,” Iweala said.
Laurie Cumbo, New York City’s cultural affairs commissioner, said in a statement to The New York Times that the city’s contributions will help the Center “be a critical part of our cultural fabric, not just for our city but for the whole globe.”
“We’re proud of our major investment in the home of the Africa Center and thank Uzo for his visionary service at the center’s helm,” Cumbo said. “We look forward to working with his successor to invest in the future of this important institution.”
A search firm has already started looking for the next leader in hopes of finding someone who can overlap with Iweala, said Jendayi E. Frazer, co-chair of the Center’s board.
Iweala “took the institution to another level specifically from the point of view making a reality of its interdisciplinary nature,” said Frazer, who shares her role with Chelsea Clinton, daughter of the former U.S. president Bill Clinton. “We love Uzo and are sorry to see him go.”
Frazer said the institution is seeking a candidate who can continue to build ties with the Center’s Harlem neighborhood as well as the city as a whole.
“They don’t necessarily have to be an artist or policy person,” Frazer said. “They could be a blend of those things. That would match with our interdisciplinary approach.”
