Where the World Comes Together in San Francisco

A woman recalled the market in Bermuda where, as a young girl, she was examined by buyers as if she were a cut of meat. Nearby, her mother wept.

I couldn't help thinking that most people -- in this America of immigrants and refugees -- have experiences that contain a similar strand of separation and sorrow, although our stories are certainly not as tragic as the slaves'. My own family fled communist Vietnam by boat; my father never saw his father again.

The two contemporary art exhibits on the museum's top floor, both running through March 12, mix Africa's bitter legacy with hope.

"Linkages and Themes in the African Diaspora" includes painting, photography and mixed-media pieces collected by Eileen and Peter Norton (he's the creator of Norton anti-virus software). An artist from Angola has a display of patterns in yarn: a woman in geometric print dress, the Mickey Mouse symbol and a silhouette of a lynched man hanging from a tree. Two silk screens from an African American artist depict a Japanese man and woman wearing kimonos, traditional white makeup -- and dreadlocks.

The other exhibition is "Dispersed: African Legacy/New World Reality," three works commissioned by the museum. One installation, "Safe House," is a house frame filled with silver dishes and other kitchenware. The first ones you notice are shiny, but look in the back and you see objects that are tarnished and battered.

The 20,000-square-foot museum is too small to house expanding collections, so officials say it will host traveling exhibitions and commissioned work. The British Museum lent stone tools from Tanzania that are 1.8 million years old -- among the oldest man-made objects in the world. The display had never left the British Museum, according to officials.

But ultimately, the museum is about ordinary people.

Future projects include an oral history with stories from the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Already launched on the museum's Web site: "I've Known Rivers," a call for stories about people of African descent.

-- Phuong Ly

The Museum of the African Diaspora is at 685 Mission St., San Francisco. Admission is $8. Info: 415-358-7200, http://www.moadsf.org.