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       Nearly all the artworks in the Phillips Collection exhibition “African Modernism in America, 1947-67” were made, as those dates indicate, during a tumultuous era, not just for Africa, but Black America. During that period, many African nations freed themselves from European colonialism, and African Americans organized against racial oppression. Yet this traveling exhibition is not a showcase for politically charged art.

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       Indeed, among the 50-artist show’s most appealing entries are realistic depictions of everyday life by American visitors to Africa. Artists Aaron Douglas, John Biggers and Elton C. Fax traveled to the continent and made, respectively, a gentle watercolor of a street scene in Lagos, Nigeria; an oil-and-acrylic painting of a bustling market in Ghana; and a delicate drawing of a woman carrying a small child on her back.

       African artists journeyed the opposite direction, with similarly tranquil results. While studying at the Rhode Island School of Design, Ghanaian artist Emmanuel Owusu Dartey painted a serene gouache of houses flanked by trees, titled “A Favorite Spot in Providence.” Moroccan Mohammed Melehi lived from 1962 to 1964 in New York City, whose architecture and color-field painting seem equally influential on “Time Square,” which features small blocks of color, tidily arrayed cross the bottom of a bright yellow rectangle. It’s the only abstraction among the show’s more than 70 artworks.

       If “African Modernism” is neither politically nor stylistically radical, it’s also not a survey of traditional or folk art. Nor does it feature works that depict the vision of Africa seen in nature documentaries. Congolese artist Pilipili Mulongoy’s “Crocodile Eating Fish” offers the only view of wildlife, and the painting’s vibe is primarily bucolic.

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       The exhibition is therefore both broader and narrower than its title suggests. Broader because it contains a large contemporary piece by feminist artist Ndidi Dike of Nigeria, as well as works by American artists of African descent (including such well-known ones as Jacob Lawrence and David C. Driskell, the latter of whom taught at the University of Maryland from 1977 to 1998). And narrower because it derives primarily from the efforts of a single organization: the William E. Harmon Foundation, which collected African and African American art.

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       When the foundation closed in 1967, much of its holdings went to Fisk University, a historically Black school in Nashville. The school’s art collection is the source of the bulk of this show, which was curated by the Princeton University Art Museum’s Perrin M. Lathrop and two scholars associated with Fisk University Galleries: former associate curator Nikoo Paydar and current curator and director Jamaal B. Sheats.

       The selection features a few works that don’t belong to Fisk, notably Tanzanian painter Sam Joseph Ntiro’s “Men Taking Banana Beer to Bride by Night,” a detailed yet loosely rendered 1956 oil that was the first modern African artwork purchased by New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Also here are two pieces that belong to the National Museum of African Art: Mozambiquan artist Malangatana Ngwenya’s “Nude With Flowers” and Nigerian painter Uche Okeke’s exuberant, red-heavy “Ana Mmuo (Land of the Dead).” Where the former shows the influence of European culture — specifically, the artist’s Catholic education — the latter features the sort of streamlined African forms that look familiar because they were borrowed by such Europeans as Picasso and Matisse.

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       Among the more ritualistic works are two by Nigerians: Jacob Afolabi’s linocut print of an ominous “masquerader” from Yoruba myth and Lamidi Olonade Fakeye’s wood carving of Sango, the Yoruba god of thunder and lightning. Other examples of woodwork or ceramics show the effects of exposure to Western art or education. London-trained Nigerian sculptor Ben Enwonwu’s carved-ebony bust is more naturalistic than stylized, Ethiopian Mamo Tessema’s stoneware jar was made while in residence in Vermont, and Nigerian Ladi Kwali’s water pot modernizes traditional forms.

       In Africa as in the United States, the postwar art world was dominated by men. Kwali is one of the few women represented in the exhibition, and is famous enough in Nigeria to appear on the country’s paper currency. Dike uses three enlargements of that bill as the basis of collages that address the role of female artists in Nigeria — including Afi Ekong, whose “Olumo Rock” is in this show — and in the United States and at Fisk University. Dike’s creation is very different from anything else in this showcase, but it does demonstrate that African modernism continued to evolve well after 1967.

       If you go

       African Modernism in America, 1947-67

       Phillips Collection, 1600 21st St. NW. 202-387-2151. phillipscollection.org.

       Dates: Through Jan. 7.

       Admission: $20; $15 for seniors; $12 for military personnel; $10 for students and teachers; free for members and visitors 18 and under. Admission is pay-what-you-wish daily from 4 p.m. to closing. On the third Thursday of the month, the museum stays open until 8 p.m., and admission is free after 4 p.m.

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