The Hood Museum of Art celebrated the opening of two new exhibitions on African Art with a lecture and gallery reception this weekend.
Christine Mullen Kreamer, the exhibit developer at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., delivered a lecture titled "The Head Carries the Body: Head and Hair in African Systems of Thought" to a nearly full audience in the Loew Auditorium on Saturday afternoon.
Kreamer is the co-curator of the exhibit "Crowning Achievements: African Arts of Dressing the Head" currently on display in the Jaffe-Hall Galleries.
The exhibit travels to Hanover from its home gallery at the Fowler Museum of Cultural History at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Her lecture emphasized the social, religious and intellectual significance that the head holds in African cultures.
"The head carries the body" is an Afro-Cuban metaphor that refers to the body as the "body politic" or the people of a community who are ruled under a figurehead.
She said that in African culture, the head is the seat of intelligence and strong emotion. From a Western standpoint, the soul resides in the heart or chest cavity.
But various African cultures believe the soul, or the essence of a person, rests in the head next to one's intellect and reason.
She said in order to celebrate and draw attention to the plethora of meanings that the head holds in African cultures, head dressings and adornments have been produced to decorate and beautify the cranium.
Headdresses hold a variety of meanings. They celebrate the changes in a person's cycle, designate special occupations (such as hunters, warriors and musicians), mark ethnic identity and also serve functional ends by protecting the head from external elements.
Some headgear is used for strictly ceremonial purposes, while other accessories are worn on a daily basis, Kreamer said.
A beaded Yoruba king's crown made of fabric, glass beads and thread provides a stunning example of the intricacy of design and production that go into making some of these head pieces.
The more elaborate the headgear, the more power and privilege that the wearer holds. In essence, a person's hat is a visual indication of his social standing in the community, she said.
This reliance on headgear begins at an early age in African societies.
Even babies in Talesse, Nigeria, wear gourd bonnets to shield their sensitive scalps from the sun, according to the exhibition's catalogue. These hats are decorated with repeating linear details etched into the shell of the gourd and painted in festive colors.
It is important to note that traditions and styles of headgear vary from region to region of Africa. Variations on theme, design and materials offer a wealth of complexities to be explored.
"Crowning Achievements" provides a thorough overview of numerous regions and their headgear. Artifacts from Nigeria, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, South Africa and Zaire are on display.
The exhibition also takes a more modern turn by drawing connections between African traditional headgear and contemporary head dressings -- from the head ties fashionably worn by women to the popular "kente" cloth hats made from strips of colorful material sewn together in lively patterns.
The trendy "Mad Hatter"-style cap seen on many college campuses and beatnik hangouts is a derivation of Jamaican Rastafarianism.
Kreamer made the point that African culture has spread its headgear beyond its borders. The post-colonial influence of European culture continues to seep into African designs, she said.
But Africans use this Western influence without shame or prejudice.
They take a Western style, like an English barrister's wig, and make it distinctively their own by varying the materials used to produce the article and the setting in which the piece is worn.
A reception followed Kreamer's lecture in the Kim Gallery of the Hood Museum.
The exhibit "Correspondences: African Sculpture at the Hood Museum of Art" provides an enlightening complement to "Crowning Achievements."
The viewer is treated with an array of African statuary, most notably the newly-acquired power figure from the former Kongo Empire of Central Africa (Republic of Zaire).
A look at the statuary supports the concept of the head as the most important body part in African culture, Kreamer said.
The head is often emphasized and enlarged to designate its spiritual and intellectual importance. A visit to one exhibition surely demands a close study of the other.
"Crowning Achievements" can be viewed until December 1, and "Correspondences" will be on display in the Friends and Cheatham Galleries until March 2, 1997.
