The Department of Art History and Archaeology Receives A Major Grant from the Getty Foundation – Columbia University

Q. What is the goal of the project?

A. This project critically revisits the histories and historiographies of the Mediterranean. The long story of world civilizationfor which the Mediterranean was, and still is, a hubhas usually been woven by quasi-horizontal and parallel vectors that move alternately between East and West. Incorporating into this field the African continent, we move beyond the west-east patterns that shaped and controlled the writing of Mediterranean art history.

Thus, Black Mediterranean places again the sea as the medial space for artistic interactions, but adds to it the north-south longitudinal meridians. The project is a corrective methodological tool that aims to include forgotten narratives and to revisit historiographies of racial subordination. It provides a forum for art historians to address overlooked Afro-Mediterranean chronicles, and is a call for a new critical humanism that revisits Mediterranean histories to offer better insights into past empires and colonial affairs. By reexamining these accounts, we can reframe Western hegemonic, epistemic control of the past. Terms such as Afro-American and Afro-European could be reconsidered around histories of Eurafrica.

Moreover, with Black Mediterranean, we hope to establish cooperation with mainly young and promising scholars in Africa, especially in countries where art history is an emerging discipline. Part of our goal is to build a regional network of academics, to foster collaboration among different art historians fields and areas of expertise.

Q. What is the historical timeframe that the project encompasses?

A. The project mainly focuses on about 600 years of history, from 1500 to the present, though trajectories that stretch back from premodern and modern times to the ancient and medieval Mediterranean world are welcomed, too.

Q. What parts of Africa will the project focus on?

A. In general, three vertical routes will be the focus: the eastern African route that moved from Ethiopia to Alexandria via Cairo (with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 as its culmination); the central sub-Saharan route that travels north to Tunis and Italy via Sicily (with the 1535 conquest of Tunis by Charles V and the 1571 Battle of Lepanto serving as anchors); and the west African route along the Atlantic coast, concentrating on the age of Portuguese expansion in Africa (circa 1415-1600).

Q. What will you specifically be teaching and/or researching as part of this project?

A. In the fall of 2022, I will teach a graduate seminar on Black Mediterranean. This course seeks to call our attention to the important artistic and cultural role played by Africa in shaping Mediterranean aesthetics and, paradoxically, the continents absence from most Mediterranean studies to date. While concentrating on the movement of artifacts, artisans, persons of power, and slaves, as well as revisiting trade routes and military conquests, the class will unveil the constant and mutual transfer of knowledge.

We will discuss various historical moments, such as the transfer of the relics of Saint Mark from Alexandria to Venice, the boom in the import of ivory from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe, the introduction of the Almohads aesthetic in Spain, as well as trading throughout the Mediterranean during the Fatimid period (around 1000 CE).

Also, moments of artistic transfer to, rather than from, Africa will be highlighted, including the introduction of the Abbasid royal aesthetics of Baghdad in North Africa, the settlements of Amalfitan traders in Fatimid Egypt, the Norman looting of Tunis around 1200, Jesuits in Ethiopia in early modern times, and, back to where the project started, the Habsburg conquest of Tunis in 1535.

Q. Will Black Mediterranean touch on current migration issues between Africa and Europe via the Mediterranean?

A. Indeed. The project already does. In February, I engaged Anthropology Professor Naor Ben-Yehoyada and Youssef Ben Ismail, a Mellon SOF/Heyman and MESAASlecturer, to interview the Algerian artist Rachid Korachiabout his project, Jardin dAfrique, in Tunis. For this work, Korachi designed and built a shrine and cemetery for the bodies of anonymous migrants who died crossing the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe.

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The Department of Art History and Archaeology Receives A Major Grant from the Getty Foundation - Columbia University