A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art features Congolese urban art, or popular painting, that portrays the life and tragic death of Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of the Congo after its independence from Belgium in 1960. A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art is available for travel.

In Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art the humble but beautifully crafted coiled basket, made in Africa and in the southern United States, becomes a prism through which audiences learn about the artistry characteristic of Africans in America from the 17th century to the present.

Next on view at the Fowler Museum at UCLA in Los Angeles, CA from October 4, 2009 and continuing through January 10, 2010.  Grass Roots will open in New York in 2010 as one of the inaugural exhibitions at the Museum for African Art's new building in Harlem. Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art is available for travel.

Image: Egg basket, Elizabeth Mazyck, Courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, 26/1065