Art dealer and collector Adam Lindemann is presenting a free public exhibition titled "Urhobo + Abstraction" in his East 77th Street carriage house on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The show features five life-size 19th- and early-20th-century sculptures carved by the Urhobo people of southern Nigeria, paired with works by contemporary artists of African descent including El Anatsui, Alma Thomas, and Jack Whitten. The carriage house is the first Manhattan building designed by Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye, whose renovation was completed in the late 2000s. The exhibition runs through June 13, open Mondays through Thursdays, and the sculptures are not for sale.
The show matters because it brings together rare Urhobo sculptures that have never before been exhibited as a group in the United States, highlighting a significant but underrepresented African artistic tradition. Lindemann timed the exhibition to coincide with the reopening of the Metropolitan Museum's Rockefeller Wing, which features sub-Saharan African art, signaling a broader cultural shift toward globalizing the art world's view of what constitutes art and history. The choice of Adjaye's architecturally notable home as the venue also underscores the intersection of contemporary architecture, private collecting, and public access to cultural heritage.