African Museum essays

African Museum essays The first museum I went to was my favorite. I went to the Museum for African Art displaying the Hair exhibit. The name of the exhibit sounded very uninteresting, but I was proven wrong. The first thing that I learned from this exhibit is that in Africa the way your hair is done represents your position in society. Your hair was probably one of the most important if not thee most important thing to an African person. A person was distinguished into which clan or group he or she was in by his or her hair style. If you were a very wealthy person your hair was extremely well done to make you stand out, be respected and to show that you were from a high class. Leadership was usually associated with wealth. Also if a females hair was messy that showed that she was a prostitute. The way a child hair was showed how old he or she is. For a baby child the hair was mostly compacted near the fontanel part of the brain to protect the baby since that is the most sensitive part of the babys brain. Other signs that distinguished an African from another African was his facial scars. Facial scars doesnt mean he was sliced with a knife and was physically scared. Facial scars was done by wearing masks. They had three types of masks: helmet, paint, and face mask. Some clans that used these types of masks were used by the Igala people in Nigeria and the Ngangala people in Angola. One of my favorite exhibitions was the showing of the children doll by the Ashanti people. The Ashanti people gave their children dolls. They didnt give their children the dolls to play with. They gave it to them so that they can socialize with them and to take care of them as if they were real human beings. I dont think it was a good idea for the parents to give a child a doll to socialize because the doll couldnt talk back and communicate. Why not socialize with the neighbors...