MONOCULTURE | A Recent History

The First World Festival of Negro Arts was held in Dakar, Senegal, 1–24 April 1966, initiated by Léopold Senghor under the auspices of UNESCO. Visitors from around the world, as well as Dakar residents, were able to attend a vast programme of events, including exhibitions presenting tribal and modern art, conferences and street performances. According to Senghor, the festival was supposed to be an illustration of Négritude, a major showcase uniting the work of African and African diasporia artists. A colloquium that took place two days before the opening, which was considered the intellectual fulcrum of the event, gathered artists and intellectuals to reflect on the role of art in the emerging post-imperial world as well as the meaning of Négritude. 

Besides the colloquium, one of the main events of the festival was the exhibition of Africa’s ‘classical’ art at the newly constructed Musée Dynamique (L'art nègre, sources, évolution,expansion) which, alongside being a major representation of traditional tribal arts, was designed to juxtapose African art with European modernist artworks. The exhibition was later shown at Grand Palais in Paris. While the exhibition of 'classical' African art was praised by Senghor as the perfect illustration of the essential uniqueness of black civilisation, the exhibition of artworks by young African painters held simultaneously at the Palais de Justice went almost unnoticed. The festival in Dakar led to the beginning of the international black arts movement, with other pan-African cultural festivals taking place over the following decade: the First Pan-African Cultural Festival (Algiers, 1969), Zaire 74 (Kinshasa, 1974) and FESTAC (Second World Festival of Negro Arts, Lagos, 1977).