Description:

Join the Program of African Studies for our weekly lunch and lecture.

Speaker: Kathleen Bickford Berzock, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs, Block Museum of Art

Title: Caravans of Gold: Making an Exhibition about Medieval Trans-Saharan Exchange

Abstract:

In 2012, Kathleen Bickford Berzock embarked on an initiative to create an exhibition that presents the legacy of medieval trans-Saharan exchange through the movement of things, people, and ideas across the Sahara Desert. The result is Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Medieval Trans-Saharan Exchange, a major exhibition that will open at the Block Museum in January 2019 and travel to several additional venues. The project has developed through consultation with a scientific committee of scholars working across disciplines, including archaeology, art history, history, and comparative literature, and involves partnerships with museums and institutions in Mali, Morocco, and Nigeria. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue that represents the breadth of these contributions. Using archaeological and textual fragments as a starting point, Caravans of Gold emphasizes the central role of the Western Sudan in a medieval global economy that was built largely on the value of gold, and looks at the wide circulation of materials and cultural practices that sprouted from this impetus, stretching from the forests of West Africa, to Western Europe, to the Middle East. The project also foregrounds the acts of informed imagination that are required to piece together an image of the past, especially when evidence is rare and highly scattered. In this presentation, Berzock will share an overview of the exhibition narrative and will provide a preview of the artworks and the fragments—many of which have been in storage since they were excavated—that will be included.