African Arts

A detailed Summary of African Arts

After attending several exhibits on Africa and its culture I picked one that I found most interesting. Built around 15 B.C. the Temple of Dendur was built as a shrine to the goddess Isis. Facing flooding issues from the Nile River it was given to the United States and rebuilt at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Standing as it did back in Egypt to some reasonable scale, the site is one of grand status.

Upon entering the exhibit the first thing to catch my eye was the wall of glass all along the right. The bright light of the sun shone in and lit the enormous area around the temple. As I got closer to the temple I noticed the hieroglyphics carved throughout the temple. Then I noticed names carved as well and dates. As if people who came across the temple wrote their own name onto it as graffiti. As if it was a sort of paper for them to deface it as they felt pleased. I walked into the temple as for in as the velvet rope allowed me to and the most obvious thing to catch my attention was written "J LIVINGSTON, JANURY 1, 1818". Written exactly as that, misspelling and all, it dawned on me that all these names written just a contemporary form of defacement but rather history of its own. The names seemed to come from nat

With a river flowing around it, and the sun shining upon it, the Temple of Dendur is by far the best exhibit of all. If some sort of translation was made available to read and understand the hieroglyphics, then the visit would have been more of an adventure instead of an assignment.

African culture is beautiful and very artistic but at the same time proves points and teaches which was proved to me by the Egungun exhibit. The same goes to Islamic culture where the mihrabs were very well artistically designed but served a purpose as well. After attending these exhibitions one thing remains the same, African tradition and Islamic culture are a beautiful history.

The next exhibit I saw jumped out at me. Seeing these masked full dressed figures in cermeniol dance postions my attentions was magnetically grabbed. Looking at

Next up was the African Art Collection. Filled with many different types of historic artifacts from Central Africa. It had masks and pipes, musical instruments and much more. The one display to catch my eye was that of a wooden sculpture of a Chokwe seated chief. Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo witnessed many wealthy states. In these states art objects were created to show the power of chiefs. This sculpture of a Chokwe chief is one of them. Chiefs showed they're power by staffs, ceremonial weapons, tattoos, jewelry and chairs. This one chief is obviously showing of his status in life by his enormous headdress and his powerful stool.

After a brief walk I came across the room of Nur ad Din. Coming out of Damascus around the 1700's the room is a replica of a room from Nur ad Din's home. With a water fountain setting the audio volume of flowing water for the room, the feeling of peace comes into play. Floored with symmetric designed marble and red velvet seating, the room was used to meditate and pray in. The key word for the room was s

Some common words found in the essay are:
African Forms, Master African, Standing Egypt, Republic Congo, Coming Damascus, Koran Koran, Names Leonardo, Temple Dendur, LIVINGSTON JANURY, Central Africa, culture beautiful, african culture, catch eye, sculpture chokwe, islamic culture, temple noticed, soul chief, temple dendur, outer wall, luba chief,

Approximate Word count = 1288
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History