Museum of the African Diaspora

Bay Area African/African-American Folklife/Other Visual/Craft/Material Arts 2011

Founded in 2005, the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) showcases the history, art, and cultural richness that resulted from the dispersal of Africans throughout the African Diaspora.  The varied forms of visual and material culture which make up the rich fabric of the social and cultural history of the African Diaspora are offered to audiences through exhibitions, education, and public programs.  Extraordinarly stories about survival, retention, adaptation, innovation, and creativity are presented in ways that acknowledge, celebrate, recognize, and educate visitors about the contributions of Africa and people of African descent to world culture.  One of MoAD’s primary goals is to be a resource for and a repository of valuable stories and material culture objects which are collected, documented, studied, and made publicly accessible.

In 2011, MoAD received a grant from ACTA’s Living Cultures Grants Program to support Textural Rhythms: Constructing the Jazz Tradition, Contemporary African American Quilts, an interdisciplinary traditional arts exhibition and public program series which combines two of the most culturally significant African American traditions: quilting and jazz.  Funds supported the public programs series which included workshops, lectures, artists’ panel discussions, curator conversations, film screenings, monthly live jazz performances inspired by the exhibition quilts, monthly quilts-in-process demonstration with the African American Quilters Guild of Oakland, and an improvisational quilting workshop with Ed Johnetta Fowler-Miller, one of America’s foremost quilt artists.

MoAD’s Textual Rhythms exhibit and quilter Marion Coleman are highlighted in the following feature from KQED TV.