The museum was part of a series of cultural projects initiated by
President Léopold Sédar Senghor. The museum was inaugurated on March 31, 1966, by Senghor and
André Malraux and played an important role in the Dakar
Festival of Negro Arts, which ran from April 1 to April 24, 1966. The museum was designed to act as a decolonial celebration of African culture, and it featured artifacts and history from the
Iron Age Nok culture all the way up to the modern era. From the 1960s to the 1970s, the museum featured collections of art and culture from the
history of Senegal, as well as exhibitions of artists such as
Pablo Picasso,
Friedensreich Hundertwasser,
Pierre Soulages and
Marc Chagall. In 1988, the museum was controversially closed and the building repurposed by the Senegalese government as a courthouse. In 1996,
Abdou Diouf announced that the museum would be reinaugurated and the courthouse moved, although this never came to fruition. President
Macky Sall returned the building to the arts community in 2016, on the 50th anniversary of the Festival of Negro Arts, so that it could act as a museum once again. == Architecture ==