Journey to Africa: A Teacher's Preview
The purpose of this Teacher Preview Packet is to prepare you and your students for a visit to the galleries of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The materials here will help you to become familiar with the tour "African Art." Feel free to share them with your colleagues and students; all materials in this packet may be reproduced for educational purposes.
Where do we begin in telling the story of African art? A hundred years ago, European writers called Africa "the dark continent" and "the heart of darkness," conjuring visions of savagery. Its reputation fared a little better among art's avant-garde. Vlaminck, Derain, Picasso, and Matisse all drew inspiration from the appearance of African arts, but never took much interest in the proper meaning or context of the pieces they saw.
How far we've come! Over the course of the 20th century, Westerners began to value the wealth of the African experience. The continent is home to climates as diverse as the desert sand-sea of the Sahara, the dense forests of the Congo basin, and the grasslands of the South African veld. These varied environments have contributed to the development of vastly diverse cultures, each with its own spiritual beliefs, art forms, and political structure. An African might live on a small farm cleared from the forest, or in a noisy industrial city. He might tend cattle, but just as easily work in a hospital. She could practice ancestor worship, or Islam, or Christianity. Collectively, Africans speak more than 1,000 languages. Given this context, it is impossible to provide even a general overview of the arts of Africa in the few pages available here.