New Exhibits on Display for Spring Semester
In January, the Museum opened the final two exhibits that will be displayed in the current building. Both will be on view until the MOA closes for the move on May 30.
Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World is part of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s Outbreak Initiative. It uses public health information provided by the Smithsonian alongside stories, games, and artifacts curated by WFU students. Visitors will be able to explore the connections between human, animal, and environmental health, and discover how people around the world track down and respond to disease outbreaks. In addition to curating the exhibit, the students in Biology Teaching Professor Dr. Pat Lord’s First Year Seminar “Outbreak: Coming Soon to a Neighborhood Near You” installed the exhibit at the end of their course. They included a number of interactive elements to help visitors of all ages engage with the exhibit content.
This Bura stone reliquary will be included in Cultures, Contexts, & Collectors.
Cultures, Contexts, and Collectors will open on January 28. The objects in this exhibit all have one thing in common: they were recently donated to the Museum of Anthropology. Before this, the objects came from a diversity of cultural traditions and time periods. Their stories continue to develop as MOA researches, conserves, and exhibits them. Wake Forest students in the Introduction to Museum Studies anthropology course curated the exhibit, with additional audio interpretation created by students in the Art of Sound journalism course. Among the artifacts highlighted in the exhibit are a beautifully embroidered Bai baby carrier from China, a Bura stone reliquary from Niger, a Nuristani coat from Afghanistan, and a carved wooden club from the Solomon Islands.