Crafting Colour: Beads, Pattern and Painting from the Kalahari

Contemporary prints and paintings produced in western Botswana over the last twenty five years feature in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology’s summer South Lecture Room exhibition, Crafting Colour: Beads, Pattern and Painting from the Kalahari. Many of the artists responsible talk about their work as a form of storytelling, and the stories they tell relate to the lives of their ancestors, hunting and gathering, but also their lives today, living on a former mission with limited access to the land and the resources it once supplied. The exhibition juxtaposes black and white images of San people in Botswana during the 1930s from the museum’s collections, with the colourful images produced more recently at the Kuru Art Project. This art workshop, established in 1990 at D’Kar in western Botswana, was inspired by the ancient tradition of San rock art found across southern Africa.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Adam and Eve Leave the Garden, Jan Tcega

Buddha's Word: The Life of Books in Tibet and Beyond

Buddha’s Word is the first museum exhibition of Tibetan material in Cambridge. It is also the first time in the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology’s history that its Buddhist collections will be showcased in an exhibition. Many of the artifacts, prints and manuscripts in the exhibition have never been on public display before. Exhibits include some of the oldest illuminated Buddhist manuscripts from the first decades of the eleventh century as well as specimens of skillfully illuminated wooden covers; a quartet of scroll paintings brought back from the infamous Young husband Expedition; and a gift from the 13th Dalai Lama. The exhibition charts some of the incredible journeys that the words of the Buddha have taken: crossing mountains and oceans and taking different material forms in different places.

Visit the official website.

Images courtesy of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge

Chiefs and Governors: Art and Power in Fiji

Chiefs and Governors: Art and Power in Fiji , on show now at the Museum and Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, is the first ever exhibition dedicated to traditional Fijian art outside its home country. It draws on MAA’s exceptional collection of Fijian artifacts, photographs and archives, a collection closely linked to the early colonial history of Fiji and the foundation of the Museum. Baron Anatole von Hügel, MAA’s first curator, travelled within Fiji between 1874 and 1877, and along with Sir Arthur Gordon (First Governor of Fiji) and Alfred Percival Maudslay (Sir Arthur’s private secretary) assembled an impressive Fijian collection, including outstanding objects presented by Fijian and Tongan chiefs. This material formed the founding ethnographic collection of the Museum when it opened in 1884. 

For more information, visit the exhibition's official website.

Information and image courtesy of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge

Origins of the Afro Comb at the Fitzwilliam Museum

The 6,000-year history of the afro comb, its extraordinary impact on cultures worldwide, and community stories relating to hair today are being explored in this new exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, England. Material culture on display at the Fitzwilliam Museum includes hundreds of remarkable combs - from pre-dynastic Egypt to modern-day combs referencing the Black Power Movement - as well as associated images and sculpture showing the wide variety of hair styles found in Africa and around the world. 

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Image courtesy of the Fitzwilliam Museum