| 1900 |
A French circus presents the Lumière brothers' slapstick film L'arroseur arrosé in Dakar, Senegal. |
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| early 1900s |
Originally introduced as souvenirs from North Africa by Senegalese Muslims returning from the Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, paintings on glass become a popular artistic medium in Senegal. Created by applying paint to the reverse sides of glass panels, this method becomes an attractive and durable means of producing portraits and illustrating religious stories and parables. Devotional portraits of Sufi saints and leaders of major Sufi Muslim brotherhoods is the primary genre of Senegalese glass painting. |
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| early 1900s–present |
Representations of Ahmadu Bamba (1852–1927), founder of the Sufi Muslim brotherhood Muridiyya, become increasingly numerous throughout Senegal, particularly in the Mouride stronghold of Dakar. Bamba was a pacifist leader who mobilized Senegalese labor forces by extolling the spiritual virtues embodied in hard work, self-sufficiency, and education. He was viewed with suspicion by the French authorities, sent into exile twice, and finally placed under house arrest in Senegal until his death in 1927. Glass paintings and murals depict aspects of Bamba's spiritual journey and earthly life. Of particular importance to Mouride art is a photograph of him taken in 1913, the only known portrait of the holy man made before his death. Although the original negative is lost, the print is the basis for countless devotional portraits in Senegal, especially during the final two decades of the twentieth century. |
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| 1931–40s |
French ethnographer Marcel Griaule leads the Mission Dakar-Djibouti, a research team organized to study the Dogon peoples of the Bandiagara Escarpment in central Mali. Over the course of the next two decades and beyond, members of the group publish more than 200 articles and books on Dogon culture, artistic practices, and religious beliefs. Griaule's Conversations with Ogotemmêli, first published in 1948, provides an account of the Dogon creation myth as told by the researcher's chief informant and collaborator, Ogotemmeli. Its serious treatment of African belief systems and intellectual traditions, coupled with its broad popularity in Europe and North America, inspire enormous interest in the sculpture of the Dogon and neighboring peoples in Mali. |
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| 1936 |
The Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire (IFAN) is established in Dakar by the French West African colonial government to support research into the natural and social sciences within the vast geographical area comprising present-day Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Republic of Benin, and Togo. Anthropological and historical research conducted under IFAN sponsorship constitutes an invaluable source of information leading to a more complete understanding of African artistic, social, and spiritual practices. |
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| 1940s |
Senegalese poet Léopold Sédar Senghor emerges as an important leader of the Negritude movement, a philosophy that embraces the productive integration of African traditionalism and Western "modernity." In 1947, Senghor edits the first collection of Negritude poetry, Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache, with an introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre. Senghor is elected president of newly independent Senegal in 1960 and is eventually elected to the Académie Française. |
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| 1940 |
Black Africans from French and English colonies are conscripted into the war against Nazi Germany. |
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| 1946 |
French citizenship is extended to all inhabitants of French colonies. |
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| 1948–60s |
Opening a photographic studio in Bamako, Mali, Seydou Keïta (born 1923) creates studio portraits of urban Bamakois. The remarkable photographs capture the optimism of a rising Malian urban middle class by combining the aesthetic vision of the photographer with the sitter's own self-presentation. Keïta's subjects proudly display "modern" props such as wrist watches, radios, and Western clothes posed against lushly patterned cloth backdrops, producing technically complex and richly textured images that exhibit a unique moment of cultural change. |
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| 1960 |
Senegal, Mali, Upper Volta (Burkina Faso), Mauritania, Niger, and Chad gain independence from France. |
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| 1960 |
IFAN is integrated into the Université Cheikh Anta Diop in 1960 at the time of Senegalese independence. The Musée de l'Art Africain, housed in the former governor's residence, is created in that year to display IFAN's diverse collections of African art. |
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| 1960 |
D. T. Niane publishes Soundjata, ou, L'épopée mandingue, a French translation of the Sundiata epic. The saga of Sundiata Keita, founder of the far-flung Mali empire (13th–16th centuries), provides an important point of national pride and cohesion for the nascent country and, for many Western readers. It is one of the earliest transcribed contributions to African oral history. |
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| 1960s–70s |
The Department of Fine Arts and the Workshop for Research in Black Visual Arts are established at the École Nationale des Beaux Arts du Sénégal in Dakar. The department is headed by Iba N'Diaye (born 1928), while Papa Ibra Tall (born 1935) is appointed director of the workshop. Tall's interest in and promotion of the textile arts leads to the establishment in 1965 of the Manufacture Nationale de Tapisserie in Thiès, Senegal. |
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| 1963 |
Borom Sarret, a film by Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène (born 1923) about a carter in Dakar, is the first African film to be funded by the French Ministère de Coopération, and wins first prize at the International Film Festival in Tours, France. Author of the novel Le Docker Noir (The Black Docker, 1956) and creator of several other films, Sembène, who had been a longshoreman at the French port of Marseille, is concerned with the conditions of contemporary African workers in Africa and abroad. The stark realism of Sembène's work reflects his training at the Gorky Studio in the Soviet Union as well as the Neorealism of his French contemporaries. |
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| 1965 |
Gambia achieves independence from Britain. |
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| 1966 |
The first Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres (World Festival of Negro Arts) is held in Dakar, Senegal, under the patronage of President Senghor. |
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| 1969 |
FESPACO (Festival Panafricain du Cinéma et de la Télévision de Ouagadougou), the largest festival of African film on the continent, is founded in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The mission of the biennial event is to promote and safeguard sustained intellectual and financial support for African cinema and to cultivate an indigenous audience for this important art form. |
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| 1970s–present |
Ongoing archaeological investigations at the early city of Jenne-jeno and other sites in the Middle Niger Delta, Mali, reveal important information about the development of religious activities, economic relations, and patterns of urban settlement among the region's multi-ethnic inhabitants. These findings provide information about the conditions under which the famous Middle Niger terracotta figures were created and used. |
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| 1970 |
Drawing upon West African traditional forms of storytelling, director Med Hondo (born 1936) attempts to define an independent African cinematic language. Soleil O, which portrays the economic and political exile of many French-speaking Africans to France, is praised at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival for its thematic content and formal experimentation. |
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| 1973 |
Djibril Diop Mambéty's (born 1945) film Touki Bouki reveals a dystopian vision of the contemporary Senegalese populace embattled by class struggle and a desire for the economic privileges of France. |
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| 1974 |
Ousmane Sembène (born 1923), a novelist, turns to cinema in order to reach a larger audience, receiving advanced training in the Soviet realist documentary style. Xala, his most renowned film, is a fiercely biting satire of Senegal's corrupt political and economic leadership. |
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| 1976–77 |
Baara, a film by acclaimed director Souleymane Cissé (born 1940), though declared by Film Comment as "the best African film ever made," is banned by Malian authorities. Cissé's next work, Yeleen (Brightness), a coming-of-age story set in Mali, is a prize winner at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. |
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| 1977 |
Malian singer Salif Keïta (born 1949) receives the prestigious National Order of Guinea from President Sekou Touré. Widely popular in his adopted city of Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, Keïta and his band Les Ambassadeurs Internationaux (formerly The Rail Band) create a fusion of Cuban, Congolese, and Malian musical influences. Keïta moves to Paris in 1984 to pursue a solo career, releasing Soro in 1987. |
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| 1980s |
Galerie TENQ (the Wolof term for "connection"), followed by Laboratoire AGIT-Art, arises in opposition to what is perceived to be the overly decorative, apolitical, and "official" art of the École des Beaux Arts, Dakar. A loose collective of visual and performance artists led by El Hadji Sy, Issa Samb, Amadou Sow, and Bouna Medoune Seye, the Laboratoire facilitates the creation of installation and performance pieces rooted in the social activism and theoretical inquiry characteristic of international art movements of the time. |
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| 1988 |
The ancient cities of Jenne and Timbuktu, both in Mali, are named UNESCO world heritage sites. The designation affords protection for the delicate mud architecture and archaeological sites found at these two centers of trade and Islamic learning. |
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| 1988 |
Gaston Kaboré, president of the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers and former director of the Centre National du Cinéma in Burkina Faso, directs Zan Boko (Homeland). The film poignantly depicts the story of a young Mossi man caught between urban expansion and his own sense of rootedness and belonging on ancestral lands. |
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| 1989 |
The controversial film Finzan by Cheikh Oumar Sissoko (born 1945) examines issues of women's health, specifically excision, or female circumcision, within the larger context of gender and generational conflict in contemporary Mali. |
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| 1989 |
The Bandiagara Escarpment, homeland of the Dogon peoples and source of historically important archaeological remains of the Tellem peoples, is designated a UNESCO world heritage site. |
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| 1989 |
Magiciens de la terre, the first major museum exhibition dedicated to modern and contemporary art from Africa, opens at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. |
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| 1990 |
In Dakar, an album recorded by popular Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour entitled Set inspires Sét-Sétal, a spontaneous movement named for the Wolof term for "cleansing," in which urban youths erect sculptures and cover hundreds of city walls with colorful murals. |
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| 1991 |
The exhibition Africa Explores: 20th Century African Art opens at the Center for African Art, New York. |
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| 1992 |
The Dakar Biennale, or DAK'ART, is founded as a major exhibition of contemporary art from around the world. |
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| 1993 |
Mali becomes the first African country to receive protective sanctions against the importation of significant archaeological artifacts into the United States, the only major art-importing country to ratify the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. |
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| 1993–96 |
Vallées du Niger (Valleys of the Niger), an exhibition presenting a survey of archaeological discoveries from West Africa, is hosted by major museums in Europe, North America, and throughout western Africa, including the national museums of Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Niger, and Mauritania. |
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| 1995 |
Africa '95, a festival of African art in England, includes the work of several contemporary artists in exhibitions such as Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa at Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, and Self Evident at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham. |
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| 1996 |
The Guggenheim Museum, New York, hosts a landmark exhibition of photography from throughout the African continent entitled In/sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present. |
