African Museum

             The first museum I went to was my favorite. I went to the Museum for African Art displaying the Hair exhibit. The name of the exhibit sounded very uninteresting, but I was proven wrong. The first thing that I learned from this exhibit is that in Africa the way your hair is done represents your position in society. Your hair was probably one of the most important if not the most important thing to an African person. A person was distinguished into which clan or group he or she was in by his or her hairstyle. If you were a very wealthy person your hair was extremely well done to make you stand out, be respected and to show that you were from a high class. Leadership was usually associated with wealth. Also if a female's hair was messy that showed that she was a prostitute. The
             way a child hair was showed how old he or she is. For a baby child, the hair was mostly
             compacted near the fontanel part of the brain to protect the baby since that is the most
             sensitive part of the baby's brain. Other signs that distinguished an African from another
             African was his facial scars. Facial scars doesn't mean he was sliced with a knife and was
             physically scared. Facial scars was done by wearing masks. They had three types of
             masks: helmet, paint, and face mask. Some clans that used these types of masks were
             used by the Igala people in Nigeria and the Ngangala people in Angola.
             One of my favorite exhibitions was the showing of the children doll by the Ashanti
             people. The Ashanti people gave their children dolls. They didn't give their children the
             dolls to play with. They gave it to them so that they can socialize with them and to take
             care of them as if they were real human beings. I don't think it was a good idea for the
             parents to give a child a doll to socialize because the doll couldn't talk back and
             communicate. Why not socialize with the neighbors kids? Most families kept to
             themselves. They didn't so...

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African Museum. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 16:37, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/54671.html