Call and Response

Call and Response features five objects from five distinctive cultures, interpreted through a creative partnership between the museum and its communities, inviting collective consideration of how museum objects, invested with memory and meaning, “call” through time, inspiring subsequent generations who draw on them as sources of pride and communal affirmation—"responding,” reimagining and reinterpreting within a contemporary context.                

A feature of the African American musical tradition, call and response is a participatory practice that engages the community in a melodic “conversation.” A musical phrase serves as a “call,” which is “answered” by a corresponding phrase—the repetitive process occurring at different intervals of the composition. This lyrical innovation, which traces its roots to Sub-Saharan Africa, serves as a creative reaffirmation of kinship and communal ties. Call and response is the organizing principle of this experimental exhibition that reconsiders the relationship between the museum and our communities.