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Africans in Byzantium: Kings, Merchants, and Monks
September 25 @ 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
CSAAD Africa~ Diaspora Forum Series:
Africans in Byzantium: Kings, Merchants, and Monks
Dr. Andrea Myers Achi
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
5:00 pm- 6:30 pm
NYU 20 COOPER SQ NEW YORK, NY 10003
3rd FL SUITE
In Fall 2023, The Metropolitan Museum of Art presented the critically acclaimed exhibition, Africa & Byzantium, which explored the complex connections between North and East African communities and Byzantium. This landmark exhibition included significant loans from thirty-six lenders, including prominent institutions in Tunisia and Egypt. Reviews highlighted not only the visual splendor of the artworks, but also the growing interest in the African individuals who commissioned, traded, or depicted in Byzantine art.
This talk builds on the research conducted for the Africa & Byzantium exhibition, offering new case studies that examine the visual and literary portrayals of Africans within the Byzantine context. Additionally, Dr. Achi will address the challenges of revealing these often-overlooked narratives from an art historical perspective and provide insights into the broader implications for our understanding of cultural interactions in the medieval world.
Watch Recording Here
Dr. Andrea Myers Achi holds a BA from Barnard College and a PhD from New York University. Trained as a Byzantinist, Dr. Achi’s scholarship and curatorial practice focus on late antique and Byzantine art of the Mediterranean Basin and Northeast Africa. She has a particular interest in manuscripts and archaeological objects from Christian Egypt and Nubia, and she has brought this expertise to bear on exhibitions like Art and Peoples of the Kharga Oasis (2017), Crossroads: Power and Piety (2020), and The Good Life (2021) at The Met and in presentations and publications. Currently, she is working on exhibition projects related to Egyptian monasteries, the material culture of Late Antiquity, and Byzantine Art in Africa.