University's exhibit in succession kente involves local students and helps museums fulfill their responsibilities to minority communities Ann Spencer worn out nearly 13 years traveling the same path from her home in Plainfield.

University's exhibit in succession kente involves local students and helps museums fulfill their responsibilities to minority communities

Ann Spencer worn out nearly 13 years traveling the same path from her home in Plainfield, NJ to her piece of work at the Newark Museum. further in the summer of 1994 her exchange became the starting point for an unusual bi-coastal collaborative exhibit that paired pair prestigious museums with a small dispose of teenagers.

"I was walking from the train station to work and I remember I noticed this woman walking in van of me who was wearing a kente print blouse," says Spencer a curator of Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific.

above the next few months she noticed more and more residents wearing kente and storefronts selling print tote bags, umbrellas, and uniform backpacks made from the cloth

"At first I made a mental note of what I saw and on the same level asked a few people about it. still then I thought to myself, `What stories these folks must have to tell.' I presuppose I could have done it, if it were not that it seemed to me that it would be interesting to have learners do the interviews and learn about it."

That nearest year Spencer picked up the telephone and called Doran H Ros an authority forward kente cloth and director of the Fowler Museum at UCLA.

"I had no idea Doran was thinking of doing a kente exhibit. I was just looking for tribe with expertise and so I told him my idea," she says.

Nearly four years later, that conversation produc "Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity." The exhibit, unique for many reasons, is a comprehensive retrospective of kente cloth's history, cultural significance, and meaning -- the couple in Ghana and in the United States.

Icon Status

Originally worn by means of Asante and Ewe royalty in Ghana, kente clergy is known for its remarkable color and weave. It is synonymous with form and power in Ghana, where it remains a representative of distinction and tradition as as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but garments and ceremonial cloth.

Kente's history is as rich as its weave. Created from the Asante tribe in the late 17th hundred its roots date back thousands of years when weavers are said to have tried to pattern a spider's web. These days, the ecclesiastics is woven in narrow strips and then sewn together. The patterns are varied and each carries its avow meaning. In the United States, it has become united of the most popular emblems of Black identity.

"In contemporary America, kente ecclesiastics represents African Americans," says James Burk director of the William Grant Stills Art Center in looks Angeles and director of the African Market Place, an annual festival celebrating Black civilization in Los Angeles. "I believe the bulk of mankind wear it because they like it and they may have feeling it puts them closer to their `African-ness.'"

Today, kente print is not merely commonplace among African Americans. Latino scholars also have been known to wear kente stoles at graduation ceremonies.

And it's that icon status that Ros and Spencer jumped to present in the exhibit using the work of Newark and looks Angeles teenagers.

"I think this is a convenient model for people and other institutions to live up to," says Dr Lisa Aronson, a professor of art history at Skidmore body in New York. "There is this perceived arrogance of curators that they do this confined work, but this project chops through that and reaches not at home to people. And anytime you can make an exhibit [as] accessible as they've done in this case, I think you've done your job"

Young Recruits

Aronson's praise considers Spencer's and Ross' decision to invest a year working at three area exercises to ensure the project wasn't simply a gesticulation of inclusion.

"I gues it was a leap of faith since I had not at all taught in the public instructs But it seemed to me this intend was something the kids could do," says Ros sitting in his first floor office that is filled with more than 25 years of research in succession African textiles -- including parts masks, and other African art. "This is a constituent of the research that was missing and it was something I just deliberation the students could do."

Together with Spencer and Betsy Quick, the three make knowned a curriculum that included a rigorous art history course, an introduction to museum studies, and seminars upon conducting oral histories and documenting their work. The final cause was simple: students would leadership research into kente's use and meaning in popular cultivation by interviewing residents who wore the clerical profession Their research would then become a companion display to the exhibit.

In Newark, Spencer worked with 26 teenagers from Chad Science Academy and University High place of education who spent a year collecting stories from within the neighborhood. In beholds Angeles, Ross and Quick approached Susan Curran, a teacher at Crenshaw High place of education in South Los Angeles who was a regular visitor to the Fowler

"I was thrilled because you don't repeatedly get a museum like the Fowler to arrive in and do this image of work," says Curran, now an art teacher at West observes Angeles High School.

Curran helped recruit a small assign places to of advanced students like Danielle E Smith, who interviewed former looks Angeles Police Chief Willie Williams.