'Grass Roots' basketry exhibit opens today

“Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art” opens today at the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art in Shawnee with a reception hosted by the MGMoA Volunteers from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
This exhibition traces the histories of coiled basketry in Africa and America and explores the evolution of an ancient art. Featuring baskets from the low country of South Carolina and Georgia as well as from diverse regions of Africa, the exhibition traces the story of coiled basketry from the domestication of rice in Africa, through the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Carolina rice plantation, and then into the current day. “Grass Roots” is on exhibit at the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art until Oct. 19.
Visitors to the Mabee-Gerrer Museum will experience diverse artifacts, including baskets, basket-making tools and historic rice cultivation artifacts. “Grass Roots” highlights the beauty of coiled basketry and how the market basket can be viewed simultaneously as a work of art, object of use and container of memory. In this exhibition, the humble but beautifully crafted coiled basket, made in Africa and the southern United States, becomes a prism in which audiences will learn about creativity and artistry characteristic of Africans in America from the 17th century to the present.
The Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art is on the campus of St. Gregory’s University, 1900 W. MacArthur St. in Shawnee. The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays. Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors age 65 or older, $3 for students and children ages 6 to 17, and free for children age 5 and younger.