Photo by: Nick Girardi

Vibrant colors, mingled and defined, stream across the woven textiles on display in Sturm Hall.

The Anthropology Museum’s newest exhibit is entitled “Indigo Journeys: The Career and Collection of Kate Peck Kent.”

Highlighting the collection of former professor Kate Peck Kent, the exhibit offers highly decorated textiles created by the cultures of Western Africa.

In 1966 and 1969, Kent traveled to Nigeria, Bhana, Benin and Togo, to bring this assortment of textiles to the University of Denver.

Kent is still recognized for her research in the textiles of the American Southwest, and is remembered by a former student as one who “did not want to possess knowledge; Kate wanted to share it and enjoy the growth it promoted in others.”

Anne Spencer, another former student said, “As a student in one of Kate’s classes, one of the most valuable lessons learned was how to study material culture and what kinds of questions to ask.”

Kent entered anthropology in the 1930s, when those acquiring doctorate degrees in the subject were rapidly becoming scarce.

By 1966, she taught full time at DU. Kent used weaving techniques to help students understand and appreciate the cultural roots of a subject.

Cloth in western Africa is of incredible high value and so much that at one period of time, western African textiles were used as a form of currency throughout the continent.

In one weaving from southwestern Nigeria, the Yoruba people created vivid cloth art using techniques such as starch resist, where starch from cassava roots is hand printed or stenciled onto the cloth to create specific patterns.

These methods are more than seven hundred years old. Other fabrics are symbolically printed, such as the circular symbol in blue, meaning “Welcome to the masquerade.” The Ashanti people of Ghana designate certain patterns for certain occasions.

An Adinkra fabric, stamped with black mud ink and a pattern made from a calabash shell onto a reddish textile, is a sign of mourning to be worn at funerals.

Other designs are drawn using bamboo combs.

The word “Adinkra,” even means “saying goodbye to one another.”

“Indigo Journeys” is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Mondays through Fridays.

The exhibit’s cultural tapestries can be found in Sturm Hall’s Anthropology Museum, room 102.