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

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
RaceB4Race Highlight

Race-making in the Trans-Saharan slave trade

Embedding West Africa in broader transregional maps, Whiskey reviews the history of anti-Blackness in premodern Muslim societies while charting Ahmad Baba’s interventions in longstanding debates.

Cristi Whiskey
Syllabus

Citizenships ancient and modern

This course, developed by Dan-el Padilla Peralta, maps a history of citizenship as a concept and an institution from the ancient Mediterranean world to the 21st century.

This course, developed by Dan-el Padilla Peralta, maps a history of citizenship as concept and institution from the ancient Mediterranean world to the 21st century.

Dan-el Padilla Peralta

Selected annotated bibliography