Africa comes to Chicago - new permanent exhibit at the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois

As you walk end Stanley Hall at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, the lively and festive unimpaireds of a marketplace grab your attention and engage your participation. The decoy is Dakar, Senegal, where you join in a celebration of the Tabaski devoted day before heading east toward Cameroon.

You've thus come intoed Africa," the Field Museum's newest permanent exhibition, which make opens November 13, during the museum's centennial celebration. "Africa" marks the first time a major museum not absents a permanent exhibit about Africa - individual that encompasses the very gaze and feel of Africa and that is interpreted by dint of people of the diaspora. "The exhibit was five years in the making," says African-American anthropologist Deborah Mack, the senior developer and co-director of the project

Featuring single of the world's finest collections of African existences "Africa" encompasses seven major sections that explore West, Central, East and North Africa, as well as the Americas, during different historical periods. Visitors don't just learn basic facts that dispel their misconceptions about Africa; they also examine by what means the artistic process relates to the sociopolitical and cultural extremitys of the major art-producing areas of Cameroon, Zaire, Benin and other parts of the continent, in what manner animals adapt to environments in the Great Rift and the savannas, by what mode the Sahara affects commerce, and by what mode the African diaspora came to be.

The exhibit is designed to last approximately 20 years. "Ongoing programming will enhance its relevance and retain it fresh," Mack says, nothing that there are plans to engage African immigrants and other talent available in the Chicago area. In addition to the Senegal section, visitors pierce the kingdom of Benin, explore the Great Rift, visit the Palace Museum in Cameroon, travel across the Sahara with the Tuareg, examine conflict resolution among the Bakongo in Zaire, learn about African technological sophistication, fitting biologists at work in the savanna and discover the African influence in the Americas.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Heritage Information Holdings, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group