Public Humanities: Africa & Byzantium

FAIN: GI-290823-23

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY 10028-0113)
Andrea Achi (Project Director: August 2022 to present)

Implementation of a traveling exhibition exploring the global impact of the art and culture of Byzantine-era North and East Africa, including public programs, online media, and a scholarly catalog.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) respectfully requests a $400,000 implementation grant from the NEH to support the traveling exhibition Africa & Byzantium, organized in collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA). Building upon a line of Met exhibitions related to Byzantium, Africa & Byzantium will foreground the critical role played by early African Christianity, its heritage, traditions, and history in the Byzantine world while challenging common preconceptions about the arts of both Africa and Byzantium. Through educational programs, interdisciplinary interpretative strategies, accessible digital materials, and a scholarly catalogue, the project will expand public understanding of Byzantium, its reach, and its transcultural authority. The exhibition will make accessible complex humanistic themes and ideas related to African identity, and will foreground the importance of the North and East Africa’s cultural heritage to the development of world history.

Media Coverage

Largely Ignored by the Western World, Africa’s Medieval Treasures Shine at the Met (Review)
Author(s): Holland Carter
Publication: The New York Times
Date: 11/16/2023
Abstract: North Africa’s influences radiated throughout Byzantium, helping to create a Golden Age. These objects are high on the beauty and rarity scale.
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/arts/design/africa-byzantine-metropolitan-museum.html

When the Roman Empire was African (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Philip Kennicott
Publication: The Washington Post
Date: 1/4/2024
URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/art/2024/01/04/africa-byzantium-exhibit-met-review/

‘Africa & Byzantium’ and ‘Ethiopia at the Crossroads’ Review: Epics of Faith and Empire (Review)
Author(s): Edward Rothstein
Publication: The Wall Street Journal
Date: 1/31/2024
Abstract: Shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Walters Art Museum encompass paintings, mosaics, sacred texts and other artifacts in their explorations of religion and history.
URL: https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/fine-art/africa-byzantium-and-ethiopia-at-the-crossroads-review-metropolitan-museum-of-art-walters-art-museum-b7396277