When Helen Katz received her diploma, the 84-year-old East Elmhurst resident was honoring a pledge made to her husband on his deathbed in 1993.

“When my husband and I were in the hospital, he told me to do what I always wanted to do,” she told the Queens Chronicle.

And what she always wanted to do was go to college. A year later she enrolled in the college’s ACE program; 14 years later, she fulfilled her husband’s dying wish, and, ironically, went against those of her Polish immigrant parents.

Growing up in the Bronx, Katz attended Evander Childs High School and had hoped to become a kindergarten teacher, but her parents......

Masks, figures, and ritual and practical objects from three centuries and 14 countries are on display through December 15 at the Godwin-Ternbach Museum, which is presenting Spirit and Power in African Art.

Guest curated by William Siegmann—former head of the Brooklyn Museum’s Department of African and Oceanic Art—the exhibition features more than 100 items made of wood, copper, iron, brass, bronze, and ivory, as well as textiles. Field photographs and documentary films illustrate their use and context. The oldest piece is a cast-copper neck ring dating from the 11th–15th century; among the newest are two ritual masks of wood and fiber, crafted in the early to mid-20th century.

The exhibition draws on the permanent collections of the Godwin-Ternbach......