The African American Heritage Museum of Southern New Jersey presents Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art an exhibition on view through January 7, 2012, that traces the history and evolution of the ancient art of coiled basketry in Africa and America.
The exhibit, featuring baskets from the low country of South Carolina and Georgia as well as from diverse regions of Africa, traces the story of coiled basketry from the domestication of rice in Africa, through the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Carolina rice plantation to the present day.
The exhibition has been made possible by NEH on the Road, a special initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art was organized by the Museum for African Art in New York City in collaboration with the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture in Charleston, SC. It was co-curated by Chief Curator Enid Schildkrout, Museum for African Art, and Curator and Historian Dale Rosengarten, College of Charleston. The exhibition is toured by Mid-America Arts Alliance through NEH on the Road. NEH on the Road offers eight different exhibitions for small to mid-sized communities across the country. Mid-America Arts Alliance was founded in 1972 and is the oldest regional nonprofit arts organization in the U.S. For more information, visit http://www.nehontheroad.org
The African American Heritage Museum Of Southern New Jersey brings to life the African American experience of the 20th Century as it documents the struggle of one group of Americans to carve their own place in the wider cultural landscape. With a permanent home in the heart of Southern New Jersey, and a traveling museum with access to over 3,000 historical and cultural artifacts, the museum offers a unique opportunity to open a window to the mindset of successive generations of African Americans and provides an understanding to its cultural evolution. – www.aahmsnj.org/
