Most Western narratives reduce Africa to a monolith of wanting and lack. Africa is (just) a (single) country. Africa is corrupt. Africa is backward, savage, dirty, diseased—a shithole. Tales of its wealth, innovation, diversity, and history apart from colonization are often dismissed as mythmaking and hyperbole.
“It was an opportunity to really think about history in a wholly new way and also to ensure that it was not just told by Europeans because the witnesses—the chroniclers—were often writing in Arabic,” Lisa Corrin, the director of the Block Museum, explains. “It’s a kind of activism, I would say, on the part of the Block and Northwestern to do this, because it [shows] how an exhibition can make a difference and change the way people think about an entire continent.”
West African gold, prized for its purity and quality, served as the foundation for these cross-cultural connections, visible in common aesthetic traits among the art and objects in the gallery. A reproduction of the Catalan Atlas, one of the few surviving examples of medieval cartography, is attributed to the Majorcan Jewish cartographer Abraham Cresques (1325–87) and abuts vitrines of Islamic dinars and gold denarii from the Roman Empire. Its six richly illustrated parchment-on-wood panels show kingdoms spanning from the Atlantic to China and from Scandinavia to the Rio Oro in Africa, including Mali, whose famous king Mansa Musa is depicted sitting on a throne holding an ornate scepter and a gold coin. Wall-mounted Christian icons painted with egg tempera and gilded with gold share wall space with textiles intricately woven with silk threads wrapped in finely spun gold. Folios from prized decorative Qur’ans and Jewish prayer books, both influenced by Byzantine luxury manuscripts, show just how integral gold was to daily life around the world.
The final section of “Caravans of Gold” makes explicit connections to the contemporary world. All of the works from Nigeria in this section are on loan from its national museum system; none have ever been seen in the U.S. before. A showstopper Seated Figure from the late 13th or 14th century, is an almost life-size sculpture of a ruler. Tests show the copper used for casting it is likely from the French Alps. In a pointed gesture, the figure is positioned to face an anteroom filled with French and Italian ivory sculptures—objects familiar to those viewers who have seen other exhibitions from the medieval period. The Virgin and Child (ca. 1275-1300) from France depicts a familiar scene of a Virgin Mary holding a baby Jesus, but its size, roughly 14 by six by five inches, indicates that the ivory used to create it is from African elephants, since Saharan elephants grow larger tusks than their Indian counterparts. One can imagine the circulation of French copper and African ivory as merchants traveled back and forth along these routes.
Through 7/21: Wed-Fri 10 AM-8 PM, Sat-Sun and Tue 10 AM-5 PM, 40 Arts Circle Dr., Evanston, 847-491-4000, blockmuseum.northwestern.edu. F
