the Africa section in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The primary function of a museum is to broaden the visitors horizon, the experience in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of African section is amazing and attracting, which show us a real life of ancient Africa.

In the Africa section, the main collections are made of following materials like wood, ivory, stone, brass, and gold. There contains some personal ornaments like wood bracelet or ivory pendant, some furniture like the seats of leadership or some house decorations, some sculptures like head of Oba, or golden scepter, tools for hunting, ceremonial vessels, musical instruments like drum or vibrated-double reed, and so on, and those galleries have its different functions, some are just for ceremony or showing power, even to honor some extraordinary individual like the Oba or the Mother of King, the others are used in practical fashion, such as hunting or cooking. That Met collection of African art covers most African except Egypt, and most representative artworks come from those areas like Congo, Nigeria and the court of Benin in the period of 20-century to the 15th century.

People read of things that happened many years ago through written words. However, Africa is always a mysterious place where leave sages and legends to preserve their history, so there are fewer words or characters carved around those collections in the gallery. Instead, it seems that those collections use peculiar and exquisite forms to express their ideas,

Compared to the rest galleries like Europe or China, the primary color of artworks in section of African gallery are brown, black, and white, those things are seldom painted with colorful pigment, and the form of African artworks are sharper other than roundish, I guess one of the reasons of monotonous color is due to the raw material, most of them are wood, brass, and palm oil, in given period, gold was also used frequently, such as golden working is known as the Crown of the Andes, Crown was made to honor the Virgin in the cathedral of Colombia, or a golden scepter, as known, African is a place where to have various mineral products like brass and gold, gold shows the power and prestige of king and religion. Through observing the collection, we have an initial idea about what kinds of natural material can be used, and what levels of technics they reach.

Human image of sculpture become the recurring images in this gallery. Those images draw from a real person and real life in ancient time, so historian and individuals who are interested in African ancestor can have a chance to know what their ancestors look like? To a large extent, tools like arrow, elephant sword or vessel reflect their lifestyles; Hunting animals are their main way to get food instead of plowing and sowing.

The most interesting thing is the queen mother pendant mask, it is made of standard material ivory which often is used as material of portrait and basic commercial commodity, in court of Benin, Ivory have a ritual function, so the ivory pendant mask was used at some special ceremonies, moreover, the tiara and collar are carved with the faces of Portuguese and mudfish, mudfish is a nature that can live in sea and land. If the natural image is understandable, and the image of Portuguese must make visitor feel confused, however, the reason that it is interesting is due to the historical background, however, before the colonial area, Portuguese brought wealth to the land cross sea, so people can know there are some connection between the western world and African, it is exchanged among the two different civilization.

The experience of Museum let us acknowledge the culture, history and lifestyle of Africa.