Museum Africa takes visitors on a tour through the heyday of the African continent’s early civilizations. People who have visited museums throughout the world have remarked on the intriguing and distinctive approach to the primary exhibitions of Museum Africa, which is housed in one of the most stunning structures in Bree Street, Newtown, right close to the Market Theatre complex.
The curators of Museum Africa in Johannesburg have described it as a trip back in time to the heyday of the African continent’s early civilizations. It is not a revisionist history of Africa created by Afrocentric academics with prejudice. The historical tour of Africa stops in sites like Punt (Somalia), which the ancients referred to as “God’s kingdom,” Kush (Sudan), and Kemet, now known as Egypt. A generation of black students may identify and rectify the record of African history as it has been presented up to this point with the help of Museum Africa, which is about a time the world forgot, a time that not many people know about, and a rich past.
The collection of rock art at Museum Africa is more than stunning, and the research and collection there concentrate on native African cultures, history, archaeology, and linguistics. Numerous local painters as well as paintings by Pre-Raphaelites and Impressionists are included in the collection of works of art.
One of the main exhibits deals with the Treason Trial, which involved more than 150 defendants, including Nelson Mandela, Albert Luthuli, and Walter Sisulu, but resulted in no convictions. Each defendant is depicted in an exhibit that includes a tiny biographical plaque and a picture of them. A tiny red book with a blank page sits beneath each portrait, inviting visitors to add observations and information about the subject.