Penn Museum offering a hands-on 'Imagine Africa' exhibition

Walk through one door at the Penn Museum this weekend and you'll feel as if you've strolled into a before-and-after advertisement.

Near the door is the museum's African exhibit - a cluster of tall glass cases filled when W. Wilson Goode was Philadelphia's mayor. About 350 artifacts are on display - a driblet of the museum's stash of 42,000 Egyptian objects and 20,000 objects from elsewhere in Africa.

On the other side of the wall is the new "Imagine Africa" exhibit, stuffed into a corridor. It's colorful, loud, and hands-on.

Museum staffers hope it will become the first step in redesigning the African exhibit so that it answers visitors' questions about Africa and draws more residents, especially from neighboring West Philadelphia. Beginning this weekend, visitors are invited to leave notes, take computer surveys, and write on white boards exactly what they'd like to see in a redesigned African gallery. "Imagine Africa" is a yearlong community-engagement project that opens with a celebration.

The opening events Sunday afternoon include storytelling, crafts, a gallery tour, a lecture, and performances from the African Rhythms dancers and the singers and percussionists of the Women's Sekere Ensemble. The museum cafeteria will offer themed specialties, from Moroccan-spiced lentil soup to black-eyed pea fritters, during the opening.

A jukebox will offer African music from Hugh Masekela, who had a Billboard hit with "Grazing in the Grass"; Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a group that collaborated with Paul Simon on his Graceland album, and dozens of other contemporary artists.

There are eight "Imagine Africa" exhibits, scheduled to be open until Sept. 16 next year. A fashion display, which is designed to engage teens, traces the history of adornment in Africa from scarification to the beaded aprons worn by status-conscious wives of chieftains. A healing exhibit will focus on Penn's current medical projects in Botswana, including telemedicine.

One goal of the project at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is to increase the number of African American visitors to the facility in West Philadelphia, where 85 percent of residents are African American.

"We know we have a building that looks like a fortress," says Kate Quinn, director of exhibitions. "People who go by probably don't even realize they can come in. We want to say, 'This is your museum.' "