Walk into the Barbican in London right now and you’ll find one of the biggest exhibitions the art world has seen in years: over three hundred works tracing a century of Pan-African art, from anti-colonial protest paintings all the way to the present day. Head to MoMA in New York and you’ll find beautiful photographs taken at wild parties in 1960s Bamako, Mali. Young people dressed to impress, dancing, living. And at V&A East, a brand new museum that opened in east London this spring, one of the things on display is the Super Nintendo that grime MC Jme used to make music in his bedroom as a teenager. Three completely different institutions. Three completely different shows. But all of them are doing the same thing: finally putting Black and African creative culture at the centre of the story.

This is a big deal. These aren’t small galleries tucked away on side streets. These are some of the most powerful cultural institutions in the world, and they’re all saying the same thing at the same time: this art matters, these stories matter, these people matter. That doesn’t happen by accident. It took decades of campaigning, curating, arguing, and pushing by artists and advocates who believed these stories deserved to be told.

But here’s the tension worth sitting with. Every single thing in those exhibitions already happened. The Bamako photographs were taken in 1970. Jme’s Super Nintendo is from the 1990s. The oldest works at the Barbican are a century old. Museums canonise things after the fact; that’s how they work. They need time, distance, and consensus before they’ll hang something on a wall. Which means the work getting celebrated today is the work that survived long enough for institutions to catch up with it.

Meanwhile, outside those museum walls, the culture is moving at full speed right now. Asake’s M$NEY, out since May, broke the Nigerian Spotify streaming record in its first week and has been one of the defining records of this summer. Burna Boy is on the official FIFA World Cup anthem with Shakira, while Rema appears on the tournament’s opening track alongside Korean pop superstar Lisa and Brazil’s Anitta. Ayra Starr dropped a new single and video in June that racked up hundreds of thousands of views before most people had finished their morning coffee. None of this is waiting for anyone’s permission or institutional sign-off. It’s just happening.

There are really two things going on here, and they’re not opposites. They’re complementary. Institutions like MoMA and the Barbican represent a kind of official record. When they include something, they’re saying: this will be remembered. That matters. But Lagos is making its own case too. In October, the city opens its fifth Biennial and launches the Àkéte Collection, which will be Africa’s first permanent public museum of international contemporary art, designed by Nigerian architect Tosin Oshinowo and built on Lagos soil. The message is simple: you don’t have to wait for New York or London to validate what you’re making. Build the archive yourself.

The best version of this story isn’t one or the other. It’s both at once: the official institutions finally catching up, and the culture itself refusing to slow down while they do. If you’re someone who has never set foot in a gallery or who switches off the moment the word ‘exhibition’ comes up, you don’t need to worry. The thing these museums are celebrating is the same thing on your playlist right now. That’s the point.

THE LIST

Five things worth your time before next week:

1. Asake — M$NEY  ·  His fourth album, out since May and just over half an hour long. It broke Nigeria’s Spotify streaming record in week one and has barely left people’s playlists since. If you’ve never heard Asake, this is where to start. It sounds like a Friday night and a Sunday morning in the same breath.

2. Ideas of Africa · MoMA, New York — closes 25 July  ·  An exhibition of African portrait photography from the 1950s to 70s, plus contemporary artists responding to that work today. These photos are joyful, stylish, and quietly radical. People in Bamako and Kinshasa posing exactly how they wanted to be seen.

3. Toward a Living Archive of African Poetry · Akashic Books, 2025  ·  Ten years of essays on African poetry from editors Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani. You don’t need to be a poetry person. This is really about how African creativity gets defined, by whom, and why that matters.

4. Ayra Starr — “Tornado” (official video)  ·  Dropped 12 June. Directed visuals to match her biggest album campaign yet. Three minutes that show exactly where Afrobeats is going, on her own terms, ahead of her album in August.

5. Ariel Wayz × Bensoul — “Waiting”  ·  A Rwandan singer and a Kenyan artist on one soulful track. It’s the kind of East African collaboration that doesn’t get enough attention. Put it on when you need something that just feels good.

WHAT’S PLAYING

Let’s talk about M$NEY, Asake’s fourth album. It came out on 1 May and is almost certainly the most important Nigerian release of the year so far.

If you’re not familiar with Asake: he’s a singer from Lagos who blew up in 2022 with an album that sounded like nothing else out there. Yoruba vocals, heavy percussion, spiritual energy, street-level storytelling. He sold out the O2 Arena and Barclays Center in New York within a year. Then, in early 2025, he left his label and decided to do everything himself. M$NEY is his first independent project, and it sounds like someone who knows exactly who he is.

The album is built around his long-time producer Magicsticks, who handles eight of the thirteen tracks. If you pay attention to production, you’ll notice it: violins, log drums, live saxophone, orchestral arrangements that feel warm and human rather than polished and cold. It doesn’t sound like a streaming algorithm built it. “Asambe” features South African amapiano producer Kabza De Small and quietly announces that the conversation between Nigerian and South African music is now a genuine exchange, not just a one-way influence. “Badman Gangsta” samples a classic Amerie record and features a French-Congolese rapper named Tiakola, and somehow it all makes sense together.

Critics have been mixed. Some say the lyrics don’t match the production ambition. That’s fair. But what’s undeniable is that M$NEY sounds like an artist who broke free and made exactly the album he wanted to make, and 42 million people streamed it in week one. Start with “Rora” and let it breathe.

THE CALENDAR

What’s on this week and next, where you are.

London

· Project a Black Planet  ·  Barbican Art Gallery, Silk Street  ·  until 6 SeptemberOver 300 works of art tracing Pan-African ideas across a century. The largest exhibition of its kind the Barbican has ever staged. You don’t need an art history degree. Walk in, take your time, and let the scale of it land.

· The Music is Black: A British Story  ·  V&A East Museum, Stratford  ·  until 3 January 2027The new V&A East opened this spring with this show as its launch exhibition: 125 years of Black British music told through 200+ objects. Jme’s Super Nintendo is here. So is Stormzy’s Banksy-designed stab-proof vest and Joan Armatrading’s childhood guitar. Grime, jungle, lovers rock, UK garage and more.

· V&A East Storehouse  ·  Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford  ·  open dailyThe sister building to the museum: 250,000 objects on open display. Free entry. No need to book after 12pm. Worth pairing with the main museum.

Manchester

· The Whitworth  ·  The University of Manchester, Oxford Road  ·  check website for current showsOne of the UK’s best gallery spaces, always doing something worth seeing. Check their website for what’s on this week.

· HOME  ·  First Street  ·  check website for current showsManchester’s best arts cinema and performance space, with a strong record of platforming African and diasporic work across film and theatre.

Edinburgh

· Edinburgh Art Festival 2026  ·  Various venues across the city  ·  opens Friday 24 JulyThe city’s major summer arts festival kicks off next Friday. Fruitmarket, Talbot Rice, and Collective are the galleries to prioritise. Free to explore.

· Ingleby Gallery  ·  6 Carlton Terrace  ·  check website for current showsTucked-away gallery with a reputation for genuinely interesting selections. One of Edinburgh’s quietest and best rooms.

Paris

· Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac  ·  37 Quai Branly  ·  check website for current showsParis’s museum of non-Western art and culture. A complicated institution; it’s worth going and making up your own mind about it.

· Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection  ·  2 Rue de Viarmes  ·  check website for current showsOne of the most beautiful buildings in Paris, converted into a contemporary art space. The current collection has been including more diasporic artists. Worth checking what’s up.