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The Art Museum of WVU
Admission is always free.

Material Matters

Use, Meaning, and the Making of Form in African & Diasporic Art

January 30–May 10, 2026

This exhibition centers on the premise of the shared heritage of Africa and the African-diaspora; purpose and message come first. Those aims guide the choice of materials selected for their physical traits and for what they signal in a community. From these choices, form follows. Whether woven, welded, stitched, carved, painted, or printed, matter becomes a language for survival, memory, devotion, protest, and repair.

The galleries are organized by what materials do: cloth can warm, protect, or signal status; wood must balance on a moving body; metal endures as jewelry or emblems of rank; found objects combine into powerful assemblies. This logic connects practices on both sides of the Atlantic. Strip-woven cloth that marks status in Ghana echoes in quilts that keep families warm and record history in communities in the Diaspora. Iron once forged for shrines reappears as gates, tools, and adornment; carved forms made for dance resonate in parade, church, and museum. 

Across the exhibition you’ll see the path Meaning & Use → Materials → Form → Activation, as works come alive in body, spirit, community, and history. From the closeness of a quilt to carved wood and the gleam of worked metal, each object speaks through its substance and the lives that use it 

IMAGE CREDIT: