Ana Lucia Araujo Historians and art historians have increasingly explored the role of material culture and gift exchanges in the context of the transatlantic slave trade.[1] A number of these studies have paid particular attention to the role of prestige gifts in the commercial and cultural exchanges between Africans and…
Sana Mirza A Qur’anic manuscript in the collection of Princeton University Library (PUL) reveals a fascinating history of the interconnections between commercial and artistic centers within the eighteenth-century Indian Ocean, and the complexity of identities and regional styles of manuscript production during a period of increasing transoceanic empires and networks.…
Eguono Lucia Edafioka Ukpon a tue re do omo.[1][It is the cloth one wears to which we will give the salute of chieftaincy.] On a December morning in 1842, King Eyo Honesty of Old Calabar penned a letter to Commodore Raymond of the British Navy. In the letter, the King…
Zulfikar Hirji The ousting of the Portuguese from coastal East Africa in 1729 ushered in an era of cultural efflorescence in the Swahili Muslim city-states of Pate, Siyu, and Faza on Pate Island in the Lamu Archipelago.[1] At this time, each city-state had a population ranging in size from ten…
Stéphane Pradines and Olivier Onezime The Swahili Coast is a stretch of land extending from Mogadishu in Somalia to the Bay of Sofala in present-day Mozambique. Etymologically speaking, wa-swahili means the people of the sahel, the Arabic word for “shore.” This appellation dates to the colonial period and the nineteenth…
Helina Gebremedhen In November 2024, the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) inaugurated the exhibition Arts of the Maghreb: North African Textiles and Jewelry. The exhibition, on view through October 2025, highlights the rich artistic traditions of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, showcasing intricate…
Stan Douglas: The Enemy of All Mankind, David Zwirner, New York, September 12-October 26, 2024 Our view is from an odd position, perhaps twenty feet in the air (Fig. 1). We look down onto a clearing within a steeply sloping bamboo forest. In the center, two figures in eighteenth-century costumes…
Over the century and a half of its existence (1648–1793), the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture amassed a collection of more than 15,000 artworks: paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, casts, and medals.[1] Its conceptual core was formed by reception pieces (morceaux de réception)—works that young artists submitted for examination…
Guillaume Lethière (The Clark Art Institute, June 15-October 14, 2024)Guillon Lethière, né à la Guadeloupe (Musée du Louvre, November 13, 2024-Feburary 17, 2025) Since last June, museumgoers on both sides of the Atlantic have been able to discover the extraordinary life and career of the neoclassical painter Guillaume Guillon Lethière…
Between 1725 and 1733, Augustus II the Strong, Elector of Saxony (r. 1694-1733) and King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania (r. 1697-1706, 1709-33), acquired an extraordinarily rare Chinese treasure for his Green Vault (Grünes Gewölbe). In 1723, this private Dresden palace royal treasury, originally known as the Privy…