Imagining Africa

"Imagine Africa"
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Through September 16, 2012

Africa is a continent that somehow always seems farther away than Asia or Australia. Australians look American and speak English, and you can't really tell if someone's Australian until you recognize the distinctive accent. And I'm somewhat familiar with Asian cuisine and languages, if only by the embarrassing amounts of food or takeout I order at Asian restaurants in Philadelphia. But I know so little about Africa in comparison.

In world history classes I had a difficult time remembering the correct locations of African countries, but that didn't stop me from wondering what life was like for the one billion people who live in the sixty-one countries (that collectively have every climate type, from tropical to temperate, on the planet) that make up Africa. It didn't help that pretty much everything I know about the continent comes from the news or Bono or last year's World Cup.

Thankfully, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has more educational resources about Africa than I do. The organization’s newest exhibit, which officially opened September 19, is titled “Imagine Africa,” and it forces you to do just that.

The collection was created to inspire community feedback through open white boards and both hand-written and computer surveys, and it will run until September 16, 2012 so the museum can receive enough feedback to redesign the African exhibit, which is part of the reason why the “Imagine Africa” display was dreamed up.

The museum has one of the largest collections of African objects in the country — over 20,000 objects with an extra 42,000 ancient artifacts from the Egyptian Collection — and it’s located in West Philadelphia, an area where 85 percent of its residents are African American.

In an effort to bring in teen visitors, the museum created the exhibit with an “Imagine Fashion” display, which focuses on African clothing and accessories of both modern and 19th-20th century African cultures.  Like the seven other displays, the “Imagine Fashion” part featured artifacts from different time periods and cultures; early 20th century scarification tools from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the practice of burning or etching designs in skin is used to show a person is civilized, were displayed next to Zuku “love letters,” strings of beads from 19th century South Africa, designed and colored in specific ways to reveal relationship statuses and messages of love, heartache, or loyalty for both the female maker and the male wearer for whom she specifically created it.  

As in other displays, the “Imagine Fashion” piece featured large panels discussing the historical context of its content as well as modern-day interpretations, like the rise of the South African Fashion Week in the international fashion market. This particular section also had a white board with a simple, thought-provoking question written on it, in this case, “Is personal appearance an important perspective for examining a culture?” Anonymous visitors wrote their answers and opinions down with the offered whiteboard marker.

Other parts of the exhibit touched on African healing and medication, slavery, dye and cloth production, and religion, and these all had similar white boards and artifacts. These displays were clean and color-coded and symmetrical, which appealed to my OCD side.

The exhibit itself helped me to reexamine and better understand Africa, just as it must have for every other visitor who helped the museum redefine its African collection for the 21st century by promoting discussion on white boards or leaving reviews on white pieces of paper or answering survey questions.

There’s no way I’m an African scholar or expert now just by going to this exhibit. But I can definitely imagine that I left the Penn Museum with a better understanding of the 61 countries and the one billion people who live there.     

Images Courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.