African Healing Journeys

FAIN: GE-50018-08

University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA 19104-6205)
Kathleen Ryan (Project Director: September 2007 to June 2010)

Planning for a traveling exhibition on African healing practices and their relationships to cultural values, past and present.

The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Penn Museum) will develop an innovative exhibition entitled African Healing Journeys, which will focus on cultural responses to illness and disease among African peoples. The aim is to educate the American public about the value of and potential role for traditional knowledge in dealing with contemporary health challenges in Africa, with larger implications about the importance of ?traditional? views of healing among various cultures in the United States today. The exhibition will incorporate about 300 artifacts from Penn Museum?s 10,000 African holdings, along with photographs, botanical illustrations, video clips, and oral and written testimonies. The exhibition has an anticipated opening date of 2012 at the Penn Museum; and it will subsequently travel to other venues (TBD) around the United States.