Ruth Winslow, curator of artifacts and exhibits for the Tucson Unified School District, works with some of the display figures for the mobile show. They will highlight the beadwork of the N'debele people of southern Africa.

photos by a.E. araiza / Arizona Daily Star

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There is one drawback to getting a traveling art museum back-to-school ready.

It means working through the summer heat, sweltering in a modified moving van.

But it seems almost apropos, given that the display being created celebrates African culture and art.

Having recently retired a Japanese display, the Tucson Unified School District is readying to launch its new mobile exhibit. The exhibit will begin its five-year tour of the district's schools in September, spending a week at each to give students exposure to other cultures.

Ruth Winslow, TUSD curator of artifacts and exhibits, estimates the district has at least 10,000 multicultural artifacts, not including textiles and other treasures. The district started the traveling-exhibit program in 2000. "One of the goals was to get these artifacts off the shelves and into the schools because when they're sitting on shelves, they're not teaching kids," Winslow said.

The problem was winnowing down the vast but scattered African collection to have a cohesiveness to them and still fit into roughly 300 square feet.

The display will focus on five cultures, including the N'debele people in southern Africa, known for elaborate beadwork; Ghana's Ashanti, known for intricate weaving and kente cloth; and Kenya's Turkana, a culture built around cattle and agriculture.

Staff and volunteers have been busily crafting cardboard cattle and drawing large background scenes borrowed straight from National Geographic for cultural accuracy.

There will be some more general displays, too, of African masks, basketry and jewelry. Winslow is also setting up an African savannah display to work in animal figurines of wood, stone and twigs.

"I'm trying to pick the showy things that will impress the kids," explained Winslow, who remembers being the kind of kid herself who liked to create little environments on cold, rainy days growing up in Michigan. "Maybe they'll go on to become anthropologists or mask carvers or artists or geologists who will study cave paintings. You never know what kind of catalysts will determine a child's future."

Barbara Allen, a technical coordinator who handles the research end of the exhibit, said African culture is fascinating. She learned the Ashanti, for example, were mining and trading gold in the 1400s and had an empire running at the same time as the Roman Empire. The culture placed great weight on education and philosophy, with linguists holding positions of high esteem, she said. Meanwhile, she also found a merger of art and science in which researchers combined DNA tests and rock art to trace the spread of humanity from its African cradle to the rest of the world.

Jane Nakatani, a volunteer, was busily crafting a tree of cardboard for the exhibit, a tree that looked remarkably like the distinctive umbrella thorns that dot African landscape.

Nakatani, whose daughter grew up in the TUSD, said she was drawn to the breadth of the display. "I love the fact that students have a chance to be exposed to different cultures and learn to appreciate art at the same time," she said.