NEWPORT NEWS — The Peninsula Fine Arts Center will host Community Day from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. on Jan. 26.
Community Day offers a chance for visitors to enjoy a day at the museum at PFAC for free.
It will allow visitors to experience PFAC’s “African Art: Power and Identity and Cash Crop” exhibits, according to a news release from PFAC.
The African Art exhibition celebrates the creativity of African artists who have made utilitarian objects of great beauty.
Made to fulfill a specific function, each object was also skillfully conceived to provoke visual and tactile delight.
Collectively, these are objects that were meant to be both used and seen. African artists use a variety of materials – they carve wood and stone, cast metal, model clay, and work with beads and into a rich array of forms.
Cash Crop by artist Stephen Hayes, a piece composed of 15 life-sized casts of the artist’s friends and family.
The 15 statues, each confined by shackles and bound to a wooden shipping pallet, represent the 15 million African people forcefully brought to the New World, according to the news release.
Families can explore the art of making Bògòlanfini or mud-cloth. Bògòlanfini comes from the Bambara language: bogo, meaning “earth” or “mud;” lan, meaning “with;” and fini, meaning “cloth.” It is the name used for a cloth decorated by women in the Bamana-speaking region of Mali, using dye made from mud and leaves to produce white designs outlines by a black/brown background.
Families can also complete scavenger hunts in the galleries. In addition, kids can make original prints using adrinka symbols.
African-American storytelling will take place by Dylan Pritchett at 11:30 am and 1 pm. A native of Williamsburg, Pritchett has been a full-time storyteller, taking his African and African-American folktales to over a hundred schools annually throughout the country.
He is inspired by cultural folktales that have a positive meaning and that bring different cultures together.
The Peninsula Fine Arts Center is at 101 Museum Drive within Mariners’ Museum Park. The center is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays; PFAC is closed on Mondays. Admission is regularly $7.50 for adults, $4 for children (ages 6-12) and free for children 5 and under. Annual membership is $40 for individuals and $60 for families. For more information, call 757-596-8175 or visit www.pfac-va.org.
