Wrapped in Pride - Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity

At a Glance

Metadata	Details
Publication Date	2022-01-01
Journal	African Arts
Authors	Betsy D. Quick
Citations	3

Abstract

Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity was a project that only Doran, and likely the Fowler, would have had the desire, or drive, or, frankly, the appetite to undertake. He envisioned it as an exhibition centered on a singular genre of art, presented through dynamic perspectives that explored the cloth’s lived contexts and meanings. It was an exhibition built in part on a year-long high school course on kente and the arts of West Africa, taught by the museum director and director of education, and engaging those very students as curators and cultural historians. And it was an exhibition that encouraged venues to which it traveled to re-curate its final section to reflect kente in their local communities. For Doran, this was the way—perhaps the only way—to tell the many stories that kente had to tell. In the final chapter of the accompanying publication, Doran wrote, “Fundamentally, this volume is about an African textile that has simultaneously found many homes in many countries, many forms within those homes, and many meanings within those forms” (Ross 1998a: 275). Now, some twenty-five years later, I am still in awe of the brilliance embodied in a project so far-reaching, so meaningful, and so visually and intellectually stunning.Wrapped in Pride began in 1996 with a call to Doran from Anne Spencer, curator of Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific at the Newark Museum, asking about the possibility of organizing an exhibition on kente that would bring the tradition up to date and consider its history in both Ghana and the United States (Ross 1998: 11). Not surprisingly, Doran ran with the idea; the Fowler and the Newark Museums coorganized the exhibition and he was the principal author and scholar of the companion volume with six additional contributors.1 The book and its related exhibition were the culmination of his work on kente and his last major traveling African project before he retired.Kente, the strip-woven cloth made by the Asante peoples of Ghana and the Ewe peoples of Ghana and Togo, is perhaps the best known and most admired of all African fabrics. It is commonly worn by men as a kind of toga and women as an upper and/or lower wrapper (Ross 1998: 19) (Fig. 1), and is a signature element of Asante chieftaincy regalia (Fig. 2). Today it has been transformed into countless accessories worn and/or used on both sides of the Atlantic (Fig. 3). First and foremost, Wrapped in Pride was an exhibition developed in close collaboration with Ghanaian scholars, weavers, and other artists, and embraced their perspectives. The exhibition and its installation design presented kente in the Ghanaian marketplace (Fig. 4) and in the weaver’s studio, as royal regalia and festive dress, as coded markers of identity and canvases for proverbial wisdom, and as stellar works of art. It also explored kente’s powerful presence in African politics, worn by new leaders as newly independent nations asserted themselves on the international scene.2 The final section, A Calendar of Cloth, focused on kente’s ubiquitous role in the secular and sacred life of Black communities in the United States—especially as a proud symbol of Afrocentric pride (Fig. 5). The Fowler’s gifted designer and director of exhibitions, David Mayo, employed these varied contexts as distinct lenses through which visitors could consider the cloth’s multiple meanings. Ambitious public programming was integral to the project, as was the 162-page curriculum resource unit teacher Lyn Avins and I coauthored that was made available free to any teacher who attended professional development programs and/or scheduled class visits to the exhibition. Funded in part by the NEH and NEA and with the assistance of the Getty Grant Program for the publication, Wrapped in Pride traveled to seven venues beyond the host cities of Los Angeles and Newark.3 So exemplary was the exhibition that the Fowler was invited by NEH (2005) to retool the project to a size that could be circulated to smaller museums at an affordable cost.4 It was among the first chosen for the new NEH on the Road initiative, an exciting opportunity for communities of all sizes to experience some of the finest exhibitions funded by the Endowment. NEH saw Wrapped in Pride as one that would have special meaning for communities across the nation, especially in those where kente was a marker of African American pride and identity. Its smaller iteration traveled to some thirty-three museums and community centers in twenty states!The project’s development required that Doran make a number of research trips to Ghana, including one he made with Mayo and Collections Manager Fran Krystock. They recall a funny moment that speaks volumes about Doran’s approach to exhibitions and storytelling. Not surprisingly, Doran decided the best way to re-present a kente market was to purchase an entire stall in Accra, with all its kente, and transport it to LA. The vendor of course was surprised, but delighted with his good fortune in selling not just his whole inventory of cloth but the stall as well! As David carefully dismantled it—to be reassembled later—a perplexed crowd gathered to witness what seemed to be the senseless wreckage of a perfectly good display stall (Fig. 6). David recalls,Without question, the Wrapped in Pride exhibition was a paradigm for how a distinctive genre could be unpacked to explore its multiple contexts and meanings (see also Rovine 2001: 13). To focus only on the static, two-dimensional cloth would create a passive experience and bypass—in fact, negate—its dynamism, its movement, its lived reality. Doran’s scholarship reminds us that kente as dress is only one part of its story: it drapes palanquins in festivals, adorns the bed of the deceased, and serves to embolden political leaders on the world stage.This static image of kente changed dramatically with my first visit to Ghana in 1974. At a festival in Cape Coast several Fante chiefs wore and “danced” kente (Fig. 7). Images of the cloth as a flat work of art disappeared in favor of something more akin to a kinetic sculpture, part kaleidoscope and part kite. Kente was made for movement, whether in a fast powerful dance or a slow majestic procession (Ross 1998b: 9).At the same time, that story could not be confined only to Ghana, and Doran felt strongly thatTo tell that fuller story, the Fowler and Newark museums partnered, respectively, with Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles and Chad Science Academy and University High School in Newark6 and engaged students of color in a year-long course of study to research and collect objects for the exhibition that they felt best spoke to their community, and to document the contexts and events in which kente figured prominently—e.g., in the church, at Kwanzaa celebrations in their homes, and the graduation ceremonies of their kindergartens, high schools, and colleges.7 The course in Los Angeles ran the entire school year and included an overview of the arts of Ghana, the history of West African textiles in general, and kente cloth in particular. Students also received instruction in interviewing and photography, and a ten-week component of the course served as a basic introduction to museum studies. At the close of the school year, three students were selected to continue as paid summer interns at the Fowler, with special funding by the Getty Grant Program.In many ways Wrapped in Pride exemplifies all that Doran believed exhibitions could achieve. He felt passionately that a vigorous program of temporary exhibitions best utilized a museum’s holdings, and a project such as Wrapped in Pride could be both a catalyst for pursuing new and expansive scholarship and a powerful tool for revisiting and correcting public misconceptions about Africa. It was a means through which individuals’ stories could be collected and also structure the project’s conceptual frame.Two details in the presentation speak to Doran’s perspective on the ways visitors connect with exhibitions and the kinds of ideas that pique their curiosity. At the kente stall—the one purchased in Accra—we included a short text featuring snippets of a conversation between buyer and seller. Glimpses of the foreign visitor (read White person or obruni) bargaining added an all-too-familiar and amusing touch. And similarly, another text panel asked the question, “What’s in a Cloth?” To visitors’ delight, they could learn how many miles of thread were needed for a heavily patterned cloth, how much it weighed, how long the weaver worked, and the cost of materials—questions people had asked Doran frequently. Meet visitors at their point of interest and knowledge—and enrich the experience with stories that capture their attention.The exhibition itself was unquestionably a mechanism for collection building—over the course of his twenty-year history at the Fowler Museum, Doran added 210 pieces of strip-woven, broadloom, machine-woven, and roller-printed kente to the collection, 165 of which were acquired during this project’s development, from December 1996 to February 1999, with an additional 47 cloths that were gifted and/or otherwise accessioned after its travel ended. Similarly, in Doran’s view such projects could be the cause célèbre for commissioning new works that foregrounded local voices. Wrapped in Pride demonstrates the myriad opportunities for meaningful collaborations in the course of developing traveling exhibitions—within the museum as curators and educators worked closely together toward common goals, interinstitutionally as teachers and students shaped a project to reflect their shared values, and with participating venues as they modified the project to mirror their own communities.Doran once remarked that “museum exhibitions are storytelling and they are at their best when told by the people who loved those stories.”8 And when they are at their best, the public responds. I am reminded of the iconic line in the 1989 film Field of Dreams—Ray Kinsella, played by actor Kevin Costner, hears a mysterious voice in his cornfield urging him to build a baseball diamond, “if you build it, he will come.” Wrapped in Pride—like so many projects Doran championed—was that special experience visitors sought. Doran understood that when museums build collections and exhibition projects that embrace the passions and perspectives of our diverse communities, seek out the participation of young people, and tell the stories that matter, they will come. And, they did … in large numbers and in dozens of cities across the nation.

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Original Source

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00633

References

1999 - Washington Post
1997 - UCLA Magazine
1998 - Fashioned Heritage
1998 - Foreword [Crossref]
1998 - Introduction: Fine Weaves and Tangled Webs
2001 - Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity” [Book and exhibition review] [Crossref]