Of Matter & Spirit: African Arts from Kansas Collections

The exhibition features sculptures, masks, body ornaments, textiles and craft arts from all major culture regions in africa, selected from Kansas museums which are rich in - a little known fact - collections of art from Africa.

The exhibit's primary goal is to introduce audiences to the astonishing vitality and divrsity of artistic expression in Africa, from north to south, West to East and to show how art in Africa is integrally related to the universal human themes of fertility of land and peole, to environment and lifeways, to keeping social order, as well as to myths of origin, world view and the acknowledgment of the power of the spiritual realm.

The exhibition will explain how arts in Africa function as agents of social control, how they assist in mastering crisis, how they structue rites of passage at birth, coming-of-age, and death, how they integrate the other as well as the stranger, how they serve to foster respect for the ancestors and help to instill moral codes in the young. Specail emphasis will be placed on works of art which serve to encourage farming and farmers and the fertility of the land in African agricultural communities, since farming is also central to the lifeway of many people in Kansas. Objects in this exhibition are at once powerful and beautiful visual expression of ideas and ideals.