The Ford Foundation announced a grant to the Museum of African Art that brings the total to $76 million out of $90 million needed to reach its goal of opening in the Fall of 2011:

Elsie McCabe Thompson, president, the Museum for African Art, today announced that the Museum has received a major contribution of $3 million from the Ford Foundation. The grant supports the final stage of construction of the Museum’s new building, which is located on Fifth Avenue at 110th Street and has been designed by the New York City-based Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP.

Inaugural-year presentations in the new building will include the acclaimed Museum-organized traveling exhibitions El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa, the first career retrospective of this major contemporary artist; Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art, which uses basketry as a lens through which to view African contributions to the building of America; and Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria, devoted to the extraordinary art of Ife, the ancient city-state of the Yoruba people of West Africa (in present-day southwestern Nigeria).