The Theodore Monod Museum of African Art at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, one of the oldest art museums in West Africa, has entered a phase of renewal.
Under director and curator El Hadji Malik Ndiaye, the museum has expanded its holdings, welcomed contemporary artists to engage with its historical collections in new ways, and created space to share new African narratives. While pursuing these initiatives, Ndiaye has contributed to — and been shaped by — a transformative exchange with Yale.
He is one of 16 leaders of cultural institutions from 11 African countries who were part of the inaugural cohort of the Yale Directors Forum (YDF), a fellowship program launched in 2023 to respond to the pressing needs of global cultural leaders, with a focus on Africa’s museums and cultural institutions.
For Ndiaye, the YDF fellowship provided an invaluable opportunity to build lasting connections with cultural practitioners across Africa and beyond.
“Participating in YDF has been a moving experience for me, where a community of peers develop their skills in an esprit de corps that reinvents the understanding of what it means to be a leader in the field of heritage conservation,” said Ndiaye, an art historian.
The Theodore Monod Museum of African Art at Cheikh Anta Diop University.
Led by Charlotte Ashamu, director of international programs at Yale’s Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage (IPCH), the 18-month program was designed in close alignment with the priorities of the fellows and their institutions, equipping them with tailored opportunities for professional learning, peer-to-peer exchange, and practical tools to safeguard collections ranging from works of art to rare archives.
The inaugural cohort of YDF fellows concluded their program in June with a three-day symposium in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, which brought together Yale faculty and staff alongside cultural leaders from across the globe to exchange knowledge and perspectives on cultural stewardship.
The program included a closing ceremony featuring remarks by Jessica Davis Ba, U.S. ambassador to Côte d’Ivoire, after which fellows received certificates marking their completion of the program. The symposium also featured a mix of seminars and site visits with leading cultural voices from Cote d’Ivoire, including jewelry designer Lafalaise Dion; musician Ruth Tafebe; and Christelle Vougo, founder and executive chef of Restaurant Saakan in Abidjan and a champion of Côte d’Ivoire’s culinary heritage.
Yale Directors Forum Fellow Malick Ndiaye receives his certificate from Jessica Davis Ba, U.S. ambassador to Côte d’Ivoire.
“When we think of cultural heritage, we often think of a museum,” said Ashamu. “But cultural heritage is practiced, explored, and preserved in many ways. And what we’ve realized is that there’s a need to look beyond the institution.”
A key component of the YDF program was an on-site capacity-building workshop in collections care and management, delivered by Anupam Sah, a leading global art conservation specialist based in India. During the workshop, Ndiaye, the Senegalese museum director and curator, and his team received hands-on training inspecting objects in their collection, monitoring environmental conditions, and prioritizing works for conservation treatment.
At his museum in Dakar, the program directly led to the establishment of an art conservation center, where interventions are already underway — and where there are plans to expand it into a full-fledged facility that will safeguard the museum’s collection of over 10,000 works and support other cultural institutions across the region.
The Yale-based program is forging a new network of cultural leaders across Africa, sparking collaborative projects, increasing institutional exchange, and enabling participation in regional and international conferences and workshops, Ashamu said.
Beyond Africa, the fellowship has also fostered linkages with institutions around the world. For example, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the program partnered with Alserkal, a leading cultural institution in Dubai, to host four fellows on funded visits to learn about cultural institutions in the UAE, including fellow Samba Yonga, co-founder of the Women’s History Museum of Zambia.
“The YDF fellowship expanded my thinking as a cultural leader, offering space to reflect, connect, and deepen research on cultural equity and heritage,” Yonga said. “It affirmed the global relevance of African-led practice and helped sharpen strategies for sustainable cultural cooperation.”
A conservator who participated in a collections care and management workshop the program organized in Kenya works on a painting in the collection of the Macmillan Library in Nairobi.
A collections care and management component of the program provided hands-on training in preventative and emergency conservation to more than 80 professionals at the fellows’ institutions and supported the creation of eight new conservation centers across Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, Ashamu said. At these centers, fellows and their teams are implementing cost-effective strategies to preserve and safeguard important collections of cultural heritage materials, directly advancing IPCH’s mission of supporting leaders in the Global South in the stewardship of cultural heritage, she said.
The program’s two global symposia — it opened with a gathering in Johannesburg, South Africa in February 2024 — featured talks and presentations by an interdisciplinary group of Yale faculty and staff, including Mark Aronson, deputy director and chief conservator at the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA); Mae-ling Lokko, assistant professor at the Yale School of Architecture; and Gana Ndiaye, assistant professor of race, ethnicity and migration in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
“The symposium was a great opportunity for me to engage with people from a variety of countries who are doing fantastic work building strong institutions and preserving cultural heritage on the African continent,” said Gana Ndiaye, a sociocultural anthropologist whose work bridges the worlds of global Black migrations and Islam in Africa and the Americas.
The YDF fellowship expanded my thinking as a cultural leader, offering space to reflect, connect, and deepen research on cultural equity and heritage.
The symposia also spotlighted alumni voices, including Regina Bain ’98, ’01 M.F.A., executive director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens, New York; Hallie Hobson ‘95, founder and principal of HSH Consulting LLC; Issa Diabaté ’93, M.Arch. the managing director of Koffi & Diabaté Architectes in Côte d’Ivoire; and Junaid “Jay” Munir (’98), Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Cote d’Ivoire.
Last spring, four YDF fellows traveled to campus to meet with faculty and staff and give presentations on their work.
For Aronson, interacting with the fellows broadened his perspective. Specifically, he connected with fellow Chao Tayiana Maina, the founder and director of African Digital Heritage, a Kenya-based nonprofit that uses digital technology to preserve African cultural heritage. Maina is building a digital archive of British colonialism in Kenya, and Aronson immediately saw opportunities for collaboration.
“My radar went up and I knew we needed to have her meet with our digital team so that they could learn about her work, and she could learn about what we’re doing,” he said.
Building on this momentum, plans are underway to welcome the next cohort of fellows and to further expand the program’s global footprint, Ashamu said.
