Metropolitan Museum of Art
Directions:
1. Please go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, African Art Section. It is in the Rockefeller, Primitive Art wing, on the first floor. Find the objects of South Africa beadwork and artifacts. You will find that you have to read the labels to find the objects. What insight does the beadwork and artifacts give you about occupational opportunities for men and women in southern Africa?.
2. Explore the rest of the African art galleries at the Met Museum. Try to answer the question: Why did southern Africa produce beadwork and tools, instead of an abundance of wooden sculpture? What does the art tell you about South African cultural history? Why is it so different from the rest of Africa? See art of Central and Eastern Africa at the Met. It is much more abundant in sculpture.
3. Please pay a visit to the Museum of Natural History, “Peoples of Africa” exhibition. Ask the guards where the six rooms of the Peoples of Africa exhibit are located. Please look at the art of both Congos. One is called the Democratic Republic of the Congo (sometimes called Zaire or the Belgian Congo) and the other is called the Republic of the Congo( or Congo, Brazzaville). There are a few objects from southern Africa and also a few costumes of native dress. Do the art objects and costumes convey any symbols of wealth or indicate the level of luxury, poverty, well-being, strong traditions or the like? Please look at the dioramas of animals and indigenous costumes to understand the historical context of the art.
4. In 1925, Raymond Dart, an Australian paleontologist at a South African University, found a famous humanoid fossil that he named“Australopithecus africanus.” It was a great breakthrough in the study of mankind’s origins, because the bones were over one million years old. Twenty years later, Teilhard de Chardin, a famous Jesuit scientist, said that people have to realize that “Africa is the Cradle of Mankind” just as Darwin had said one hundred years before. Please look at the Early Mankind/ Origins of Man Exhibition at the Museum of Natural History. It is in the Spitzer Hall of the Museum. Describe the exhibition briefly and give your opinion about its educational value. Did you find it easier to understand the debates regarding human ancestors as a result of viewing the Early Mankind Exhibition? Are you convinced that Homo Erectus migrated out of Africa to China and Europe? Does the exhibition convince you that homo sapiens evolved in Africa and then migrated to other continents? What is your opinion?
5. Directions for writing the paper. The paper should attempt to answer the questions posed above: What do the art objects mentioned above indicate about the symbols and values of the southern African societies you are studying. Secondly, what does the Early Mankind /Woman kind exhibition tell you about South Africa’s role (and the southern hemisphere’s role in the study of the origin of mankind in Africa)? Write 3 to 5 pages, please. Double space your paper, please. Be sure to include your overall conclusions about the value of art as an indicator of economic development.
