African-Themed Community Day Rocks the Museum

Event lets kids study African culture in context

by Gail R. Taylor

The bronze Japanese dragon, the limestone French bishop, and even the glazed brick floor vibrated to the beat of African drums earlier this semester as toe-tapping children, parents, and other visitors crowded the Sculpture Court in the Allen Memorial Art Museum for a Community Day concert by the student ensemble Ilu Aiye.

This spring's Community Day culminated a KIDZHIBIT program that immersed area children in projects inspired by the exhibition A Matter of Taste: The African Collection at the Allen Memorial Art Museum. The exhibit, which displayed almost all of the museum's African pieces, also cast a lens on how Western cultures have collected African art over the years.

The children participating in the KIDZHIBIT program first toured A Matter of Taste and then brought African themes, patterns, and colors to life in the present. With help from student docents, during two Saturday workshops they crafted tribal diviners' bags and constructed imaginative masks embellished with bells, beads, and strands of raffia. The results were on display for their parents at Community Day.

Nine-year-old Josh Wells said his mask was "a dragon fire-breather" with a special red-painted section for scaring off enemies. Eight-year-old Saige McNeal said hers was a creature with only one enemy: "Scissors. Because it might get cut and it won't be nice anymore." Nine-year-old Karen Reynolds said her multicolored owl mask had one special power: "To keep my sister from bugging me."

"Kids love to work with paints and tie things to the masks they're making, but they don't necessarily see the larger context of what they're doing," said Sara Hallberg, the museum's curator of education, who organizes KIDZHIBIT and Community Day programs once each semester and during the summer. "We started with a tour of the exhibition, then they used their hands and their minds. On the last day, the kids saw the culture they'd been studying in the correct context."

That they did. Wearing their creations, the kids listened to

Ilu Aiye - a student-run drum, dance, and singing troupe whose name in Yoruba means "Drums of the World" - play music from throughout the African diaspora. After the rousing concert, several accepted the drummers' invitation to dance and to ask questions.

"Does your hand hurt?" a child asked a drummer after the thundering crescendo that ended the concert.

"It's lost all feeling," was the reply.

Then some children became collectors. They asked the drummers to autograph their programs.