The African Origin of Civilization curated by Alisa LaGamma and Diana Craig Patch; Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room curated by Hannah Beachler, Michelle Commander, Ian Alteveer, and Sarah E. Lawrence

Abstract

In times of confusion and change, the human mind tends to escape the present moment, wandering in past and future tenses. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s recent exhibitions on African and African American art rendered visible what I suggest is a transitional period being undergone by both fields. The exhibition The African Origin of Civilization, which included insightful “guest appearances” spread throughout the Met’s galleries, demonstrated the strong ancient Egyptian artistic influences enacted by and on other African arts in the past three millennia. On the other side of the museum, Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room offered a counternarrative, opening avenues for new perspectives on both history and the future. Together, the two exhibits fostered potential recontextualizations of African and African American histories highlighting the roles of archaeology within our contemporary lives and fabulating about human futures. Nestled in the middle of the Egyptian collection, The African Origin of Civilization offered twenty-one pairings of forty-two individual ancient Egyptian and other African artworks from the Met’s collection. Gathered under a chronological banner highlighting historical events on the African continent, and punctuated by descriptive paragraphs of the exhibit’s project as shaped by Cheikh Anta Diop’s philosophy, these pairings aimed at catalyzing temporal, geographical, and topical discussions. A redefinition and reconsideration of Egyptian art within the African art historical canon became possible through some of these pairings—not only through aesthetic similarities, but also through meaningful connections made in the wall texts. Gathered under telling subtitles such as “Exceptional Women” (Figs. 1–2), “Masks as Doubles,” “Active Enlightenment” (Fig. 3), or “Lineage of Knowledge” (Fig. 4), Alisa LaGamma and Diana Craig Patch’s curatorial choices showed the range of inspirations drawn from each civilization, and the influence of Egypt on African aesthetic productions, (above, l–r) 1 Edo artist, Igbesanmwen guild, Court of Benin; Nigeria Iyoba (Queen Mother) Pendant Mask 16th century Ivory, iron, copper