Cameroon art exhibit at QCC

Queensborough Community College (QCC) is hosting the most extensive collection of African Art from the country of Cameroon in nearly 25 years in their Art Gallery, according to college officials.
A Cameroon World: Art and Artifacts from the Marshall and Caroline Mount Collection is a comprehensive array of more than 200 pieces of art and artifacts from all regions of Cameroon that illuminate the skills of artists from cultures throughout this African country.
Holland Cotter, art critic of The New York Times describes it in his January 6 review, “…there’s no other place within striking distance to see this much material from this Central African country, and it’s fascinating stuff.”
Called “Africa in miniature” for its geological and cultural diversity, the country of Cameroon possesses a rich legacy of its age-old traditions that have been maintained through its music, dance and art.
The exhibit showcases the beauty of the objects and the sense of Cameroon’s culture, as well as Mount’s decades-long appreciation for how Cameroon is represented through its works. He is a long-time professor of art history, and currently an adjunct professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at New York University.
The collection includes figurative and architectural sculpture, masks, costumes, hats and jewelry, pipes, vessels and pots of varied materials, furniture, weapons, musical instruments, and historical paintings.
This rare collection, the most extensive exhibit of its kind since 1984, will be on display at Queensborough’s Art Gallery through February 29, 2008.
The gallery, located on the QCC campus, 222-05 56th Avenue in Bayside, is open Tuesdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Wednesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. The gallery is closed Mondays.
The Gallery will host two lectures this year about the country of Cameroon and the collection.
On Thursday, January 24 at 6 p.m., Konrad Tuchscherer, Associate Professor of History and Director of Africana Studies at St. John’s University, will speak. He is an expert on the scripts and archives of the Bamum people of Cameroon, Co-Directing this program at the Archives du Palais des Rois Bamoun, Foumban, Cameroon.
The final lecture will be on Wednesday, February 13 at 1 p.m. with Alexis de Happy as lecturer. Mr. de Happy was born into the Bamileke royal family of Bana, Cameroon, and, after being educated there, left for Paris in the late 1970s where he obtained a degree in Philosophy at Lyc/e Claude Monet.
For more information on their exhibits including A Cameroon World, or to learn about membership, please contact the QCC Art Gallery at 718-631-6396 or visit www.qccArtGallery.org.