The Disorienting Beauty of 'Africa & Byzantium'

(February 1, 2024)

The Atlantic

“Africa & Byzantium,” the unexpected and revelatory exhibition now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (it travels to the Cleveland Museum of Art in April), presents an alternative to that unilinear path—something more like a transit map, where different lines run in parallel, loop, diverge, and offer various points of transfer. Organized by Andrea Myers Achi, the Met’s associate curator of Byzantine art, the show and its catalog share an ambitious goal: “to present a narrative of Africa unconnected to colonialism and its legacies.”