Join us for a mid-day concert featuring accomplished folk singer Beth DeSombre. She performs a short set of songs including Ex-voto, a song inspired by the Peres-Maldonado Ex-voto in the Davis Museum Collection. DeSombre is the Frost Professor of Environmental Studies and Professor of Political Science.

Black Womanhood Symposium:
Scholars will discuss cultural identity, aesthetics, politics, and religion. Sessions will include perspectives by scholars from the areas of sociology, Africana studies— including the religions of Africa and the African Diaspora—as well as artists, art historians, and curators on visual arts and film. Chairing the symposium from Wellesley College are Professor Filomina Steady and Assistant Professor Pashington Obeng, Africana Studies Department; discussant is Visiting Instructor Genevieve Hyacinthe, Art Department; and speakers include Professor Oyeronke Oyewumi, Department of Sociology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, New York; Professor Stanlie M. James, Director African & African American Studies Program, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Arizona State University; artist Renée Cox, New York; and guest curator Barbara Thompson, Curator of African, Oceanic, and Native American Collections, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.

Check back in a few days for the symposium registration form.

In their performance, a group of New York and Boston based artists including Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons and Dineo Bopape, incorporate a sound component and address the Black Womanhood exhibition. In conjunction with the performance artists, Visiting Instructor Genevieve Hyacinthe will teach a class in the Art Department/Africana Studies (ARTH 316); guest artists are invited to her class.

Ellen Zweig’s work ranges from poetry to performance art,
installation to interactive webbased art. HEAP, her series of videos currently on view at the Davis Museum, explores the cultural encounters that are the result of travel by portraying China through Western eyes. Funded by the E. Franklin Robbins Art Museum Fund and and Wellesley College Friends of Art.

Children of all ages and their adult friends are invited to enjoy an interactive day of drumming, dancing, gallery activities, and fun. Musician/composer Martin Case will lead a drumming and dance performance and lesson, with help from Wellesley student dancers and friends. Light refreshments will be served. This event highlights the ongoing reinstallation of the museum’s permanent collection as well as the exhibition Black Womanhood: Images, Icons and Ideologies of the African Body. All are welcome to stay for the performance to follow.

Choreographer and Physical Education Dance Instructor Samantha Cameron creates a dance with composer/percussionist artist Martin Case based on the objects in Black Womanhood. Wellesley College student dancers interpret chosen works of art through dance.