Met to Map Out Black Artists’ Fascination with Ancient Egypt

Metropolitan Museum of Art New York Follow +

New York‘s Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced a new exhibition examining ways ancient Egypt has inspired Black artists and others over the past 148 years.

Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now will take place at The Met Fifth Avenue from 17 November, 2024 to 17 February, 2025.

‘The exhibition takes its title from The Met’s painting Flight into Egypt (1923), an emblem of fugitivity and timeless creativity by the expatriate artist Henry Ossawa Tanner—the first internationally recognised African American painter—who travelled to Egypt in 1897,’ said curator Akili Tommasino.

It includes works as recent as Madeline Hunt-Ehrlich’s film Cleopatra at the Mall (2024), which reflects on the rediscovery of Edmonia Lewis’s major sculpture The Death of Cleopatra (1876),’ he continued.

The exhibition includes dozens of artists from the United States and abroad.

Contemporary artists include Fred Wilson, Sam Gilliam, and Lauren Halsey, whose 2023 commission for The Met’s rooftop creatively conflated South Central L.A. and ancient Egypt.

Works by Julie Mehretu, Noah Davis, and Kara Walker also feature in the exhibition.

Flight into Egypt will have a dedicated Performance Pyramid. It will include a history of Black performance art that references ancient Egypt and performances by artists including Rashid Johnson, Karon Davis, and Steffani Jemison.

Extending beyond the visual arts, the exhibition will also include contributions from comedian Richard Pryor and musicians Solange Knowles, Sun Ra, and Egyptian Lover.

Ye—who famously sang ‘have you ever had sex with a pharaoh? / Ah, put the pussy in a sarcophagus’—is conspicuously absent from the artist list. —[O]

Main image: Fred Wilson, Grey Area (Brown Version) (1993). Pigment, plaster, and wood. 50.8 x 213.4 cm. Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of William K. Jacobs, Jr. and bequest of Richard J. Kempe.