“Ties that Bind: Wedding Customs from around the World”
January 25 – May 3, 2008

This new exhibit showcasing wedding costumes from different cultures and exploring the role weddings play in different communities, will be on display Jan. 25 through May 3 at the Museum of Anthropology.

The exhibit was developed by Lydia Dorsey, a senior anthropology major at Wake Forest, under the instruction of Beverlye Hancock, the museum curator. It includes traditional outfits and other items from the Hmong culture in Thailand, the Maasai culture in Kenya and many other cultures around the world. The exhibit shows how weddings and the connections they create are essential to social stability and continuity.

The wedding costumes in the exhibit are on loan from Ten Thousand Villages in Greensboro. Items from the museum’s collections are also incorporated in the exhibit.

In conjunction with the exhibit, Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, author of “Wedding as Text: Communicating Cultural Identities through Ritual,” will present a lecture at 7:30 p.m. April 3. Leeds-Hurwitz is professor of communication at the University of Wisconsin at Parkside. The event is free and open to the public.