Aimee Bessire, visiting associate professor, art and visual culture, Bates College, and Mark Bessire, Director, Portland Museum of Art, discuss the founding of Africa Schoolhouse, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing quality education to rural villages in Northern Tanzania, and the impact of African art in the United States. They will be joined by architects Pamela W. Hawkes and T. Scott Teas, of Scattergood Design, who have worked with the Bessires on the construction of the first girls’ boarding school in rural Misungwi District, providing a safe educational environment through sustainable architecture.

Presented in conjunction the exhibition Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.

This presentation is hosted by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and offered as a free community event by the Camden Conference and World Affairs Council of Maine in anticipation of the 29th Annual Camden Conference: The New Africa, February 19-21, 2016.Free and open to the public.