Cite this content:
Achi, Andrea Myers. "Medieval North and East African art." Throughlines. Throughlines.org/suite-content/medieval-north-and-east-african-art. [Date accessed].

Medieval North and East African art

Africa & Byzantium and beyond

Download the transcript
Andrea Myers Achi
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Medieval North and East African art played a central role in shaping the cultural and artistic networks of the medieval world. Regions such as Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia produced vibrant artistic traditions that both influenced and interacted with Byzantium and the broader Mediterranean. Africa & Byzantium, an exhibit curated by Andrea Myers Achi at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, highlighted these connections to reframe medieval history to recognize Africa’s integral and enduring contributions to global art and culture.

Further learning

Video

Curating from the lens of critical race studies

Museums are pedagogical spaces where assumptions about race, power, and identity are constantly reinforced or, potentially, challenged.

Andrea Myers Achi
RaceB4Race Highlight

Rethinking race in museum exhibitions

Exhibition curation can function as a pipeline to diversify the field, introducing prospective students to medieval materials and helping them build their CVs, but there needs to be cross-institutional collaboration.

Andrea Myers Achi

Recommended

RaceB4Race Highlight

The far right's Byzantium

Roland Betancourt analyzes contemporary white supremacist invocations of Byzantium. The alt-right ideas of a New Byzantium share links with premodern narratives of defeat and reconquest.

Roland Betancourt
Video

Teaching early global literatures

Teaching global literatures rooted in the premodern world challenges the fantasies about the past many of our students have inherited.

Geraldine Heng
Video

Race-making and the preservation of power

The history of racial and religious caste in Spain echoes through contemporary far-right political parties

Mayte Green-Mercado

Selected annotated bibliography