Help preserve a living Detroit legacy.
For more than 30 years, MBAD African Bead Museum has been a place for African material culture, art, storytelling, education, and community in the heart of Detroit.
What Olayami Dabls began in 1994 has grown into an extraordinary cultural environment encompassing African beads and cultural objects, monumental outdoor installations, the African Language Wall, Arts Alley, educational programs, and spaces for gathering and creative exchange.
As MBAD looks toward the future, preserving what has been built is just as important as creating what comes next.
Your support helps make both possible.
YOUR GIFT SUPPORTS
PRESERVATION & STEWARDSHIP
MBAD is a living, evolving environment. Our outdoor installations, murals, buildings, African material culture collection, and grounds require ongoing care.
Your support helps us preserve and maintain the physical and cultural landscape that has grown here over more than three decades.
EDUCATION & CULTURAL PROGRAMMING
Through storytelling, workshops, school visits, artist programs, community experiences, and initiatives like the AfricanFuturist Greenhouse, MBAD creates opportunities for people of all ages to engage with African and African diasporic history, art, culture, and creative traditions.
Your support helps us continue that work and reach the next generation.
OUR COLLECTION & STORIES
The objects at MBAD carry histories that extend far beyond the museum.
Support helps us care for African beads, cultural objects, artwork, photographs, archives, and the stories surrounding them — preserving not only the materials themselves, but the knowledge they carry.
THE FUTURE OF MBAD
MBAD is entering a new chapter.
From the preservation and continued development of our museum campus to the redevelopment of N’kisi House and the expansion of creative, educational, and community spaces, we are building toward a future that honors what came before while creating room for what comes next.
Your contribution helps ensure that MBAD remains a place where African material culture is preserved, stories are shared, artists create, young people learn, and community can gather for generations to come.
MAKE A GIFT
Every gift — at every level — helps sustain MBAD.
When you give to MBAD, you are investing in the preservation of a one-of-a-kind Detroit cultural institution and helping carry more than 30 years of art, knowledge, storytelling, and community into the future.
→ DONATE TO MBAD
OTHER WAYS TO SUPPORT
Giving is only one way to become part of MBAD’s story.
Volunteer your time and skills to support our campus, programs, events, murals, and special projects.
Partner with MBAD through education, exhibitions, cultural programming, sponsorship, research, and community collaboration.
Shop the African Bead Gallery and support the bead tradition and business that have been at the heart of MBAD since its beginning.
Visit and share MBAD with others. Every person who walks through the museum, learns its story, and carries that story forward helps strengthen its legacy.
→ VOLUNTEER
→ PARTNER WITH MBAD
→ SHOP THE AFRICAN BEAD GALLERY
HELP CARRY THE STORY FORWARD
MBAD was built over decades — bead by bead, artwork by artwork, story by story.
With your support, we can preserve what has been created, continue the work happening today, and build what comes next.
→ SUPPORT MBAD