The African American Heritage Museum of Southern NJ will present a new exhibit that traces the history of coiled basketry in Africa and America and explores the evolution of an ancient art. Entitled Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art, the exhibit will open on Saturday, November 12th with a reception scheduled from 2-5:00 p.m. at the Martin Luther King Center in Newtonville. The exhibit will be on view through January 7, 2012.

A variety of items including baskets, basket-making tools and historic rice cultivation artifacts will be on display. Grass Roots highlights the remarkable beauty of coiled basketry and shows the humble market basket as a work of art, object of use and container of memory. This survey of the beautifully crafted coiled basket is instructive about the creativity and artistry characteristic of Africans in America from the 17th century to the present.

The exhibition has been made possible by NEH on the Road, a special initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art was organized by the Museum for African Art in New York City in collaboration with the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture in Charleston, SC. It was co-curated by Chief Curator Enid Schildkrout, Museum for African Art, and Curator and Historian Dale Rosengarten, College of Charleston. The exhibition is toured by Mid-America Arts Alliance through NEH on the Road. NEH on the Road offers eight different exhibitions for small to mid-sized communities across the country. Mid-America Arts Alliance was founded in 1972 and is the oldest regional nonprofit arts organization in the U.S. For more information, visit http://www.nehontheroad.org or http://www.maaa.org