African art museum moves to LIC.

The Museum for African Art is pleased to announce that it will relocate from its current space in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan to the Sunnyside/Long Is land City neighborhood of Queens, beginning in September 2002. This is an interim move for the Museum, which is in the process of planning and building a permanent home at the top of Museum Mile, on Fifth Avenue between 109th and 110th Streets, with an anticipated move-in date of early 2005. The museum's opening exhibition, scheduled to run from Fall through February's Black History Month, is entitled "Facing the Mask."

The exhibition will provide a marvelous, interactive introduction to African art and culture -- including music, dance, masquerade rituals, gender and role play, and the art itself -- through the motif of the mask.

In moving to Long Island City, the Museum for African Art joins a growing community of arts organizations that have discovered the spacious warehouse-type spaces that are so accommodating to exhibition space. The Museum for African Art will operate its galleries, as well as its public and school programs out of a 12,500-SF space on the 3rd floor at 36-01 43rd Ave., Long Island City. The Isamu Noguchi Museum is located in temporary space on the floor of the same building while it renovates its own permanent space. In addition, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) plans to move to Long Island City this Spring, while it renovates and expands its permanent space on East 53rd -- 54th Streets in Manhattan.

Also located in Queens and linked by a shuffle bus that makes a continual loop on weekends is P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, the Socrates Sculpture Park, and the American Museum of the Moving Image.

The Museum for African Art is currently located in Manhattan at 593 Broadway, between Houston and Prince Streets, where it will remain in full through July. From September 2002 -- 2005 it will be located at 36-01 43rd Avenue, Long Island City, NY, 2 blocks from the 33rd Street Stop on the #7 local subway line.