“African Diaspora: the scattering of people from Africa and the sowing of their cultures globally.” The Museum of the African Diaspora (MOAD), recently opened in San Francisco and aims to “connect all people through the celebration and exploration of the art, culture and history of the African Diaspora.”

You don’t have to be in San Francisco to visit MOAD. Its website, offers a comprehensive, multimedia, participatory, virtual experience. You can take a video podcast tour of all three floors; submit a story for the archives projects; view slide shows of art, sculpture, photography, currently on exhibit; and read first-person African narratives from the Middle Passage to the 21st century.

After an hour on the site, you might be tempted to skip a visit in person. This would be a pity. MOAD is as much a model of architecture as it is a museum. A triumph of light, space, elegance and transparency, the building offers numerous clever sensory delights and surprises. The deceptively simple 3-floor, glass-walled atrium structure incorporates a higher-than-average number of seating areas for “rest and reflection”. As you walk into the entrance lobby, you are greeted by a question on the wall: “When Did You Discover You Are African? “

Few museums I’ve visited, in cities around the world, pull off the difficult feat of filling the mind and imagination without exhausting the brain and senses. The very nature of museums often leads to overstimulation. Complex navigation routes through multiple galleries and exhibits can cause tiredness and frustration. There is often just too much to absorb in one visit. MOAD’s offerings are certainly abundant, demanding, and multifaceted. But clearly, considerable thought was given to making them joyfully digestible.

The MOAD experience begins across the street from the building. Through the giant glass wall of the museum, passersby see a 2-story photomosaic of an African child’s face. The mosaic, constructed upon a photo by Chester Higgins Junior, is made up of thousands of photos submitted from around the world, of people both on the continent and in the Diaspora. Many of them are accompanied by titles and explanations, but, disappointingly, the main image of the young girl is not. I wondered what her name was, where the photo was taken. Is she still alive? What is her story?

One of the stated goals of MOAD is to remind visitors that “human life originated in Africa and gradually traveled to the rest of the world.” The point is brought graphically home by a glowing wall display. A few tiny dots of light emerge in the middle. They spread and multiply, creating a map of the world, while a timeline above the map highlights simultaneously the dates of major human migrations. The day I visited, a school group of 9-year olds were riveted by this feature. Their teacher had to force them to move on after 3 repetitions.

MOAD emphasizes its unique identity as a “first voice museum”, one that draws directly on the original testimonies of those who live the art, culture and history it explores. It’s ongoing I've Known Rivers Story Project is an unprecedented effort by an international museum to collect, publish, and archive "first voice" narratives from people of African descent.

Permanent exhibits include:
Celebrations—Ritual & Ceremony
Music of the Diaspora – connecting jazz, blues, and gospel to reggae, rock and roll, and hip-hop.
Culinary Traditions – highlighting Africa’s role as primary producer of major food products
Adornment
Slavery Passages, and the Freedom Theater
Temporary exhibits are curated around four universal themes - Origins, Movement, Adaptation and Transformation. This seems a little simplistic. One questions the thinking behind such rigid classification. Living culture is messy and boundary-defying. As a museum-goer, I prefer to be confronted with its complexity, offered tools to engage with the contradictions and commonalities, rather than told that this particular collection exemplifies “Adaptation” or “Movement”.

For example, in July of this year, MOAD will mount the first solo exhibition in America of Qes Adamu Tesfaw, Ethiopia’s finest living artist. How can a body of work created over a 70-year lifetime slot into one or two themes?

Another question raised by my visit to MOAD is that of accessibility. Entry is free to children, $5 for seniors, $8 for everyone else. No sliding scale that might accommodate those on lower incomes. This seems a particularly ironic blind spot, given the national rate of poverty among African-Americans: consistently double that of white Americans since the Civil War. In addition, the majority of African Diaspora newcomers to San Francisco are refugees from Africa’s economic and military crises. $8 per person for a museum visit is simply outside the budget for households in these circumstances. Even more ironic, MOAD does not participate in the Free Museums Day Program, where entry to all San Francisco museums is free on the first Tuesday of every month. At the time of writing, MOAD’s staff had not returned my calls requesting further information on the reasoning behind these policies.

There is no question that MOAD is an exhilarating, enriching, and exciting addition to the global culture of the African Diaspora. In the breadth of its vision and the aesthetics of its conception, it does important and groundbreaking work. Its task in the years ahead will be to ensure that the very populations it portrays within its walls are equally represented among the visitors who walk through its doors.

Visit MOAD at www.moad.com

* Shailja Patel is a Kenyan poet, writer and theater artist. Visit her at www.shailja.com

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org