Reflections of Culture

Examine how WHAT you wear tells WHO you are.

Learn how people around the world communicate information about themselves as you explore many forms of personal adornment, including traditional and contemporary clothing, jewelry and body art.

Reflections of Culture draws from Fernbank’s permanent collections – featuring the Dorothy Methvin McClatchey Collection – to showcase the fascinating similarities among cultures throughout the world and the different ways of expressing cultural information through the things people create and wear.

This exhibit focuses on the most personally expressive of those objects: personal adornment. People around the world decorate their bodies with clothing, jewelry and various forms of body modification, including piercing, scarring, painting, shaping and tattooing. Personal adornment allows people to express their cultural identity and provide a particularly effective means of communicating social, political and economic information about themselves and the society in which they live.

Discover what culture is and how it is expressed through a variety of contemporary and historic objects. Artifacts are placed alongside captivating photographs, which provide a context for how the objects are worn, by whom and why. Educational offerings throughout the gallery allow visitors to further explore how personal adornment is used to express culture.