Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa at the Block Museum of Art was a cultural tour de force, showcasing more than 250 objects that reframed how visitors look at objects globally from the eighth through the sixteenth centuries and places Africa at the center rather than the peripheries of history and economics. Caravans sought to retool the popular stereotypical historical metanarrative of “medieval” that conjures images of knights at round tables, famines, or a European Renaissance in the making. Juxtaposing archaeological fragments alongside astonishing intact artworks sourced from West and North Africa, the Middle East and Europe, this exhibition told a story of a global network of exchange that coincided with the spread of Islam, rather than Christianity, and was driven by gold, salt, and enslaved bodies. Posing new questions to refocus our attention on and understanding of the meaning of “medieval”...
Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa curated by Kathleen Bickford
Amanda M. Maples joined the North Carolina Museum of Art as its first full-time Curator of African Art in 2018. She previously was a curatorial fellow in African and Indigenous American Arts at Stanford University's Cantor Arts Center and also served in curatorial and scholarly capacities at the Yale University Art Gallery, the National Museum of African Art, the High Desert Museum, and University of California Berkeley's Hearst Museum of Anthropology. She has written on historical and contemporary African arts, museum policies and collecting practices. [email protected]
Amanda M. Maples joined the North Carolina Museum of Art as its first full-time Curator of African Art in 2018. She previously was a curatorial fellow in African and Indigenous American Arts at Stanford University's Cantor Arts Center and also served in curatorial and scholarly capacities at the Yale University Art Gallery, the National Museum of African Art, the High Desert Museum, and University of California Berkeley's Hearst Museum of Anthropology. She has written on historical and contemporary African arts, museum policies and collecting practices. [email protected]
Amanda M. Maples; Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa curated by Kathleen Bickford. African Arts 2020; 53 (1): 89–93. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00520
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