MuseuMAfricA

Museum Africa or MuseuMAfricA (formerly known as the Africana Museum) is a historical museum in Newtown, Johannesburg, South Africa.

The museum was established in 1933, when the Johannesburg Public Library bought a large quantity of Africana material and books from John Gaspard Gubbins. From the mid-1930s, the museum's scope widened to include all aspects of African cultural history and material culture.

The museum regularly published catalogues of the Africana it had in its collections, with titles such as "Military medals of South African interest", "Artists' impressions of Johannesburg, 1886-1956" and "Claudius water-colours in the Africana Museum". From 1943 to 1993 the museum also published the quarterly journal Africana Notes and News.

The museum established the following branch museums: James Hall Museum of Transport, 1964; Bensusan Photographic Museum and Library, 1969; The Museum of South African Rock Art, 1969; and the Bernberg Museum of Costume, 1973. In 1978, it took over the Museum of Man and Science.

In 1994, after the fall of apartheid and the election of a representative democratic government in South Africa, the museum was refurbished and renamed MuseuMAfricA.

MuseuMAfrica launched an exhibit entitled "Never, never again" which led to the establishment of the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto. The Apartheid Museum in Gold Reef City was created and run by Christopher Till, former head of the Africana Museum.

The museum is housed in the city's former fruit and vegetable market in Newtown, built in 1913, located opposite Mary Fitzgerald Square, on the same block as the Market Theatre.

The museum has collections of African material culture from across the continent, including noted collections of tokens, musical instruments and head-rests.