ABOUT:
Join Dr. Andrea Myers Achi, Mary and Michael Jaharis Associate Curator of Byzantine Art in The Met’s Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, for a virtual tour of Africa & Byzantium. Art history has long emphasized the glories of the Byzantine Empire (circa 330–1453), but less known are the profound artistic contributions of North Africa, Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, and other powerful African kingdoms whose pivotal interactions with Byzantium had a lasting impact on the Mediterranean world. Bringing together a range of masterworks—from mosaic, sculpture, pottery, and metalwork to luxury objects, paintings, and religious manuscripts—this exhibition recounts Africa’s central role in international networks of trade and cultural exchange. With artworks rarely or never before seen in public, Africa & Byzantium sheds new light on the staggering artistic achievements of medieval Africa. This long-overdue exhibition highlights how the continent contributed to the development of the premodern world and offers a more complete history of the vibrant multiethnic societies of north and east Africa that shaped the artistic, economic, and cultural life of Byzantium and beyond.
OUR THOUGHTS:
This was a wonderful exhibit and destroys any Hollywood generated narratives that are racist in context and try to display black people as having no history prior to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. To the young, please know that race in Ancient Rome didn’t operate in the oppressive fashion it does in the Americas. Especially the history of the USA. People of color weren’t all slaves and they had wealth, position and status and this wasn’t out of the norm or the exception.
Kisses from PARIS!!!