Africa amongst us

Africa amongst us is a 2025 participatory exhibition held at the Benaki Museum’s Pireos 138 building in Athens, Greece. It ran from 13 February to 25 May 2025 and was developed by the Benaki Museum in collaboration with the ANASA Cultural Center for African Arts and Cultures. The exhibition drew on the John Phillipson Collection — objects principally from Nigeria, Cameroon and Kenya, assembled in the 1990s by the Greek-Canadian mining engineer and Cavafy translator John Phillipson and given to the Benaki by his widow Connie after his death in 2015.

The exhibition was curated by Sofia Chandaka, the museum’s curator of World Cultures collections, with Michalis Afolayan, founder of the ANASA Centre. It was developed with more than thirty members of the Afro-diasporic community living in Greece. The Benaki’s Pireos 138 building is the museum’s annexe for contemporary programming, adapted from a former industrial building. The Benaki Museum’s main house on Koumbari Street was given to the Greek state by Antonis Benakis in 1931.