In 1969, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Algiers opened its doors to an exhibition of historical artworks from across the African continent. Since its establishment in 1931, the Museum of Fine Arts had served as a space for shifting stakeholders to articulate Algeria’s modern identity and its place in the history and production of art. Originally founded with the goal of claiming Algeria’s place as an important center of artistic and art historical production in the French empire, its colonial organizers amassed a collection of works by great artists of the Western canon. Rather than closing the museum’s doors in the aftermath of the Algerian revolution, the postcolonial regime instead chose to revivify it as a national institution: in addition to establishing a gallery showcasing the work of major players in Algeria’s post-Independence artistic community, its new directors also demanded the repatriation of the museum’s original collection of European art, absconded to France during the chaos of war. But the 1969 Exhibition of Traditional Art, as it was named, was the first time that the museum—or any museum in North Africa—would host an exhibition dedicated to the arts of sub-Saharan Africa. The exhibition was organized as part of the First Pan-African Cultural Festival (PANAF) held in Algiers from July 21 to August 1, 1969. In both literature of the day and subsequent scholarship, PANAF has been characterized as a sounding board for revolution, political and cultural. In this spirit, the organizers of another exhibition staged at the festival, the Exhibition of Contemporary Art, invited works by African makers actively engaged in articulating new conceptions of postcolonial artistic modernity. In contrast, the Exhibition of Traditional Art, notably involving major contributions by institutions and art historians based in Europe, appears at odds with the decolonizing energy of PANAF. In this talk, however, I will explore how this exhibition—through its organization, its logics of display, and its relationship to other representations of “African art” at the festival and elsewhere—speaks to an important call for revolution at the institutional level that lay at the heart of modernist projects in the decolonizing art world of the mid-twentieth century. Furthermore, this case study elucidates the agency and impact of actors based in the former colonial world in addressing art historical problems and initiating a process of institutional transformation with which we still grapple today.