Due to a special event in the Ames Family Atrium, the sound component of Ámà: The Gathering Place by Emeka Ogboh will be turned off at 2:00 p.m. on certain days.

The first commissioned artwork for the Ames Family Atrium, Ámà: The Gathering Place by Emeka Ogboh (Nigerian, b. 1977) is an installation integrating sound, sculpture, and textiles. As you listen to the music that migrates throughout the atrium, we invite to you to relax and consider your experience of this setting.

The work’s point of departure is the social role of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s atrium, used by visitors as a place for meeting and exchange, eating and drinking, working and relaxing. Ogboh describes the atrium as the “heart and soul of the museum,” and compares it to the ámà—or village square—the central force of Igbo life in southeast Nigeria where he was born. “Both sites,” Ogboh explains, “are contact zones, spaces of gathering and ritual activities in their respective settings.”

Ámà: The Gathering Place continues Ogboh’s multisensory approach to interpreting place, which is at the core of his art. Just as memories are not accurate records of the past, Ogboh’s installation does not faithfully re-create an Igbo village square in Cleveland, but rather imports its main elements for visitors to engage with an altogether different setting on the other side of the world. Mirroring the global scope of the CMA’s collection, Ámà: The Gathering Place offers you an immersive welcome.