Gelatin silver print
Celebrating Pan-Africanism
Lagos’s FESTAC ’77, also known as the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, was a monumental declaration of African modernity staged with unprecedented scale and ambition. Its centerpiece was the National Theatre, designed to welcome artists and intellectuals from across Africa and its diaspora. The architect, Stefan Kolchev, modeled it on his earlier, smaller design for the Palace of Culture and Sports in Varna, Bulgaria. The massive, crownlike structure features curving concrete ribs and a tiered, projecting roofline. Marilyn Nance’s dynamic photographs of the festival, which captured the theater in its original glory, have since become iconic representations of 1970s-era Nigeria.
Architects of Liberation: Modernism in Western Africa, July 5, 2026–January 2, 2027
Gallery label from 2023
At age twenty-three, Brooklyn-based photographer Marilyn Nance traveled to Lagos, Nigeria, as the official photographer for the US contingent at the Second World Festival of Black and African Arts and Culture (FESTAC ’77). A euphoric Pan-African gathering and beacon for the African diaspora, FESTAC ’77 gathered over fifteen thousand international artists, musicians, and intellectuals. Nance stayed in Nigeria for the entire month-long festival, creating over fifteen hundred images.
Her wide-ranging photographs—which include intimate studies of companions and acquaintances, portraits of African American luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts movement, and snapshots of pairs and trios on the streets of Lagos—demonstrate an astute sensitivity to bodily expression and the distinct rhythms of the festival, which fostered a sense of pride and solidarity among people across the African continent and the African diaspora.
2023
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Modernism in Western Africa
3 EastDuring the unprecedented period of liberation and decolonization across Africa, many dreamed of a continent with a boundless future. Ghana gained independence from British rule in 1957, and in 1960—often called the Year of Africa—17 nations struggling for self-determination achieved political autonomy.
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