Body of art

An exhibit piece is mounted for Africa Embodied: The Language of Adornment, an exhibit at the Tang Museum this past winter. This first student-curated show at the Tang presented textiles, masquerades, sculpture, beadwork, jewelry, even a few barbershop signs—all to illustrate the ways that various African cultures use body art to communicate status, gender roles, and other social values. The curators were students in Professor Lisa Aronson’s art history seminar on “African body arts.”