EUGENE–A political scientist who earned his doctorate at the University of Oregon, and who also trained as a dance performer in the Yoruba masquerade festival of Egungun…

A UO journalism graduate and war correspondent who became a reporter for the New York Times and worked in Nigeria…

An anthropology and psychology undergraduate who secured her degree 47 years after she first entered the university…

This trio of University of Oregon alumni are key figures in a saga whose results can be seen at the UO Museum of Natural History’s new exhibit, "Masks, Music and Motion: Community Healing Among the Yoruba of West Africa," which opens Jan. 16 at the museum, 1680 E. 15th Ave.

The story begins with Fred W. Welty, a 1946 UO graduate, who landed the dream job of all new journalism graduates: reporter at the New York Times. But he was far from a rank beginner. Welty had served in World War II as a sergeant in the Fifth Army, writing press releases and feature stories as his unit fought its way through Africa and Italy with legendary war correspondent Ernie Pyle.

Welty later spent four years in Nigeria during its first years of independence and the end of the colonial era in 1960. As a writer for several psychiatry and psychology journals, he became interested in the medical needs of the Nigerians and raised money for the first psychiatric clinic in the country.

One of the objects in the UO exhibit–an eight-foot-tall wooden house post carved with images of fertility goddesses–was given to him in appreciation for his work. The rest of the objects are a small part of a large collection of West African traditional art that Welty bought, sight unseen, in 1971.

His sister, Mary L. Johnston, believes that the objects were probably acquired by a European collector in the 1950s. But collecting art was just one of Welty’s many interests.

"He was an amazing man in many ways, " she says, "one of the most exciting men I have ever known."

When Welty died in 1989, Johnston inherited about 90 objects from her brother’s collection, including the 24 Yoruba sculptures, masks and wands that form the core of the UO museum exhibit.

Johnston, like her brother, graduated from the University of Oregon. But she took a less direct route to a degree. After two years at Oregon State University, she had first enrolled at the UO as a psychology major in 1948, but she left shortly thereafter to marry andto raise four sons.

Her college re-entry in the 1980s was motivated partly by the departure from home of her four grown sons, but her choice of majors was inspired by her curiosity about Welty’s collection.

"I looked at some of the pieces every day, and then it became important to find out what they were about and the people who had used them," she says.

Johnston enrolled in a UO anthropology class taught by Vernon Dorjahn, now professor emeritus of anthropology.

"I thought I would just take one class from Professor Dorjahn!" she remembers.

Instead, she picked up where she had left off more than 40 years before.

"Mel Aikens’ archaeology class and all of the classes in the anthropology department turned out to be just what I had been looking for," she says. Johnston graduated Phi Beta Kappa as the 1994 class elder with a double major in anthropology and psychology.

As guest curator of the exhibit, some of the results of Johnston’s decades-long quest to discover the meaning of these objects can be seen in her exhibit text and descriptions of the objects.

The third alumnus, Olu Adekanmbi, grew up in Abeokuta, a city north of Lagos in Nigeria, the source of several objects in the exhibit. A Yoruba chief, Adekanmbi earned his doctorate in political science from the UO in 1970 and returned to Nigeria to live and work.

Adekanmbi formerly headed the Department of Business Administration and was a member of the governing council of Ogun State Polytechnic in Abeokuta. He is now a consultant on African arts and culture.

As a teenager, Adekanmbi performed as a masked dancer in traditional ceremonies of the Egungun society.

Johnston met Adekanmbi in 1997, when he was lecturing at the UO in a class taught by ethnomusicologist Don Addison. He gave Johnston two objects shown in the exhibit in appreciation of their friendship and her respect for Yoruba culture. One is a bronze statue of King Ewuare, a great 15th-century king who united the Yoruba people, and the other is an Egungun masquerade costume shown in the exhibit. The costume shows the signs of wear and tear of actual, high-energy performances.

Adekanmbi and Johnston continue to correspond, and Adekanmbi acted as a consultant and resource for the exhibit that continues through June 20, 1999, at the UO Museum of Natural History.

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