Jul 17, 2010

African Eyes, Hardsleeper43












Barbaro is back to posting, this time from Senegal and Gambia in West Africa. His first entry makes for compelling reading at http://hardsleeper43.blogspot.com/.

In a couple of weeks, my daughter heads to Mali for a week of work there.

As a long-time believer in something vaguely like Karma, or just coincidence with a capital C, I happened to be at the Detroit Institute of Arts a couple of days ago, where the featured exhibit was African art that presented the Western . . . uh . . . visitors?? . . . as perceived by African artists over the last three centuries or so. It was a stirring show.

Then this morning I got an email from Barbaro, saying he had arrived in Dakar, was posting, would I please spread the word.

I take some good-natured crap from certain breakfast guys for proclaiming, with Hamlet, the possibility of "a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will" in the form of Coincidence. But Karma is more interesting as a word. Accuracy is overrated.

Had I known I was going to post this, I'd have taken more shots of the exterior and hallways at the D.I.A. It would be a handsome building in any city.

And the cafeteria serves very good food.

**

2 comments:

Barbaro said...

Thanks for the plug.

I thought it was a great exhibit, and we should all feel lucky (if perhaps also guilty) that hardly any artwork of that caliber is on display anywhere in Africa. "African museum" is, sadly, a near oxymoron.

It is a grand building, but I'm a little bitter over the closing of the Woodward entrance.

Anonymous said...

Will check it out.

Lovers' Lane