Finally Made It...

to the Museum of the African Diaspora (www.moadsf.org)! It was a beautiful day in San Francisco so my sister and I took the kids into the city to check out the museum (and then to visit the new shops in the SF Center).

The MoAD is a sophisticated, interactive museum experience. The space is not particularly large (a narrow lobby and two floors of exhibits), but specific attention is paid to the various flows of the Diaspora (the slave trade AND later movements and migrations).

Most of the installations on the second floor relied on documentary, televisual, and audiovisual display formats (in one theatre, visitors could sit and listen to well-known black scholars or writers read slave narratives, in another one views docu-dramas of, among others, the Haitian Revolution and Nelson Mandela's struggle for freedom). Other displays on this floor used an interactive format to comment on music, food, and style of dress. The kids really enjoyed pushing all the buttons and jumping around the dark theatres. Altogether these displays were interesting, but I do question some of the curatorial choices given the ways black peoples have traditionally been represented. (For example, in the display about clothing, the visitor sees his/her face reflected back in a mirror as the head coverings, clothing, shoes, and accessories the visitor looks at change. Another way of 'imagining' ourselves in someone else's shoes?!


The photo of the gate of no return on Goree Island, Senegal is the only visual about slavery. Otherwise the visitor listens to slave narrative. The horrors of the Middle Passage and of slavery itself are glossed over. Food, clothing, and music are considered the 'conspicuous' aspects of black culture, but even these are displayed in a way that separates cultural practices from material realities. Finally, sociology, anthropology, and the 'documentary' are the ways blacks have traditionally been looked at and MISrecognized).

Moving on...

The girls had been reading about black women and quilt-making, so we were especially excited to see this exhibit. The hall leading to this exhibition hall showed pictures from the WPA of Southern poverty in the 1930s-1940s. Quilts were hung around the exhibit room and a few tables were set up so that guests could look at binders containing pictures and information about quilting practices etc. OK, I would not call that 'interactive' per se. Anyway, this room also featured a large screen and benches for visitors to screen the powerful PBS documentary The Quiltmakers of Gees Bend.

We went on up to the third floor, and on the way I had to get a shot of the amazing collage that lines the stairwell of the museum. The girls got nervous of the height and also needed a break!







The Carrie Mae Weems exhibit was amazing and timely. I was also pleasantly surprised to see so prominently displayed a direct and thoughtful exposition concerning the sexual exploitation of black women. The exhibit was hauntingly serene...


We rode the elevator back down to the lobby as I was intent on getting to the gift shop and the girls were developing museum legs. I am crazy about these collages, I've got to figure out a way to get a swatch for my office!

The gift shop was great, there were so many books that I wanted (one on Alvin Ailey, another on Lorna Simpson, a third on contemporary Afro-Cuban artists...). The girls were entertained by a very nice woman working at the museum who read to them and let them play with all the toys and trinkets. (I must go back for the Frederick Douglass finger puppet, it doubles as a Christmas ornament, and the Sojourner Truth doll!). They had great stuff for kids like memory cards with African American art or Civil Rights facts. Long story short, I didn't buy anything, being influenced as I was by recent blogs about budgetting and shopping (see Another Hair Trip). But, I will be back in the Bay over the weekend...

We went on to Bloomingdales WHICH IS AMAZING! Apart rom the incredibly rude SF crowd of shoppers, I finally entered into shoe heaven at Bloomies! Love, love, love. So many things that I want, but I bought nothing! Talk about restraint. Saturday...