Anthropology and Modern Art

Today we toured Centro Leon, a museum filled with anthropology and modern art. We learned a lot about the Dominican Republic's history and its first inhabitants. We learned that the people from Africa brought many things, including: music, bright colors, spices for food and the opera! Whoa, what...the opera! No, my bad, the tour guide said, "okra." Okra, is an edible green not belting voices! However, Sue and I were uncontrollably fighting back a strong urge to burst out in our extremely contagious laughs as we did not want to disrupt the tour. Our tour guide spoke English beautifully with an obvious Spanish accent. As we entered the modern art exhibit, I stared at a large photograph with six prints of people covered in nylon stockings with circular band-aids stuck all over their bodies. Our tour guide asked, what these 6 people had in common and my classmate replied, "They are all covered in dots..." and I chimed in with the word, "band-aids." We obviously do not use the right side of our brain often as the photograph depicted racism and these people were hurt, so they were covered with band-aids. Needless to say, we still had a wonderful day, which was filled with learning more about art and how to make cigars, as we toured the cigar factory as well!!