The African Arts Collection Gallery
Collection List:
The African continent is huge, extending across 4000 miles of forests, desert, grassland, and mountains from Senegal on the Atlantic coast to Somalia on the Red Sea, and an even greater distance from its northern ports and beaches on the Mediterranean to the turbulent seas that meet at the extreme southern tip. Each of Africa's many nations encloses within its borders a multitude of language groups, and each group is divided into smaller populations with differing histories and customs cultures and regions of Africa.
The visual arts of this continent are therefore extremely diverse. Distinguished by their creative energy and inventive design, African arts also embrace not only sculpture and painting, but every aspect of costume, choreography, architecture, and practical design. Yet the classification of these objects within limited categories such as crafts, furniture, clothing, or weapons is not accurate, because of the spirituality that is often associated with their materials, symbolism, function, and the processes of their creation. While no collection of objects outside of their African context can fully represent these arts, a sample can serve as an introduction.