Three years after opening to the public in 1886,
the Cincinnati Art Museum mounted an exhibition of African art
from the collection of Indiana-native Carl Steckelmann. As a
trader, he traveled the coast of central Africa in the 1880s
and 1890s, assembling these extraordinary artworks along the
way. The success of the exhibition encouraged the Museum in 1890
to purchase nearly 1,300 objects from Steckelmann’s collection,
which is on view now in the Cincinnati Art Museum’s new
Gallery of African Art.
