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

Essay

La Chanson de Roland and white supremacist medievalisms

La Chanson de Roland as a national epic was a product of both European nationalist and colonial aspirations. It's important for students to understand how the poem and its histories can reiterate Eurocentric white supremacist values if not properly contextualized.

Adam Miyashiro
Video

Othello and the epithet of "Moor"

Ambereen Dadabhoy uses Shakespeare’s Othello as a text through which students can think about contemporary Islamophobia.

Ambereen Dadabhoy
Activity

Postcolonial theory and the medieval epic

Analyzing The Song of Roland and The Song of the Cid from a perspective of postcolonial theory. Students will write short papers identifying themes and images in medieval literature read through postcolonial frameworks.

Adam Miyashiro