GRAMBLING — Stacked figure sculptures, akuba dolls, wooden fertility figures and a giant South African Zulu war shield fill Grambling State University's Dunbar Hall art gallery.

The items are included in "Africana," an African art exhibit which runs through Nov. 1. 2007

"We try to promote African-American heritage with each year's shows," said art department chairperson Donna McGee. "With this particular exhibit, we wanted to promote real African pieces."

Every piece in the collection originated in Africa. The Monday evening reception allowed the owners to share their thoughts with students.

"We look at African art in museums, but that's out of context," said art professor Tammie Slaughter, who donated various pieces to the collection.

Slaughter and the art faculty explained that most African art was designed for a specific purpose, a variation on the Western aesthetic of designing art to be decorative pieces.

"The Western aesthetic is artwork hung on a wall," McGee said. "The African aesthetic is artwork used and lived with, much of it created for ceremonial purposes."

Nonso Okpala, an accounting freshman born in Nigeria, studied a white, West African wooden helmet mask and said it somehow reminded him of his transition from childhood to manhood.

"When I look at this, I picture myself during those festive periods," said Okpala, who moved from Nigeria to Grambling in January. "I see something like this thousands of miles away from home, and it makes me feel proud of who I am."

Lucy McIntosh, a retired GSU sociology professor, admired the large black and gold adinkra cloth she purchased in Ghana and donated to the new exhibit.

"We saw the children there designing it," she said. "This was all done by hand."

When she was asked if students at a historically black college would appreciate an African art exhibit with genuine pieces, nearby student Kenneth Brown responded for McIntosh.

"You would think," he said.

Brown, a business marketing junior originally from Los Angeles, said he hopes the exhibit brings students a new appreciation of art and how it relates directly to them.

"Back in California students are into the arts," Brown said. "White students go to African exhibits there. They're more open to cultures that are not their own."

Brown said he hopes GSU students realize through elements like "Africana" that college is not just about getting a degree, but the entire college experience.

"Exhibits like this are great here because they show black students their history," Brown said. "Everyone else came to America to prosper, but we're in a class of our own. So we've been robbed of a lot of our great history."

Brown said his favorite piece in the collection, a small stone head portrait from South Africa, resembles an aunt who died in 2005.

"This looks exactly like my Auntie May," he said. "This is a culture I'm connected to. I feel it."