The Zinsou Foundation and the Museum of Ouidah, is the first contemporary institution of its kind in Africa. On June 6 2005, when the Zinsou Foundation opened its doors in Cotonou in the Republic of Benin, West Africa, its founder Marie-Cécile Zinsou explained, “African art of today is Africa’s most beautiful metaphor of tomorrow”, adding that “nothing is more urgent than making it visible.”From the Foundation's website:
The history of the Zinsou Foundation can be read in many ways, in the eyes of young Beninese adults, who have come since childhood to visit exhibitions and discover a world of creations; in that of the artists who have exhibited or have come to reside for a few weeks, a few months in our walls, in the articles that the press around the world has devoted to us, in the many books that we have published in the last fifteen years or in all the images that you will discover on this site and which each tell a part of the adventure, as so many pieces of the puzzle of an action in constant evolution.
Our fundamental mission, since June 2005, is simple and ambitious: to share with all our populations the pride of the cultural creations of our continent, Africa, and to make these creations dialogue with the world.
The Foundation fights in its own way against the prejudices that still too often surround artistic and cultural initiatives in Africa: it is useless, there are other things to do that are much more important, contemporary art does not interest anyone... At the Zinsou Foundation, we refuse to let ourselves be stopped by these speeches and our audience shows us every day that they are futile and unfounded.