‘Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now’ presents nearly 200 works of art that demonstrate the many ways in which ancient Egypt has been a source of inspiration and identity for Black artists and other cultural figures
Fred Wilson (American, born 1954), Grey Area (Brown Version), 1993. Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of William K. Jacobs, Jr. and bequest of Richard J. Kempe, by exchange (2008.6a–j). Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Opening at The Met on November 17, 2024, the major exhibition ‘Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now’ examines how Black artists and other cultural figures have engaged with ancient Egypt through visual, sculptural, literary, musical, scientific, scholarly, religious, political, and performative pursuits. The multi-sensory exploration of nearly 150 years of artistic and cultural production features nearly 200 works of art in a wide range of media from The Met collection and public and private collections, including critical international loans from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Europe. Thematic sections trace how Black artists and other agents of culture have employed ancient Egyptian imagery to craft a unifying identity, the contributions of Black scholars to the study of ancient Egypt, and the engagement of modern and contemporary Egyptian artists with ancient Egypt.
The exhibition is made possible by the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund, the Jane and Robert Carroll Fund, the Ford Foundation, and the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
Additional support is provided by The Hayden Family Foundation, Allison and Larry Berg, The Holly Peterson Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
“Ancient Egypt is a symbolic source for people of the African diaspora that continues to inspire. This groundbreaking exhibition brings to light a modern history that has developed over nearly 150 years and is also an active creative tradition existing outside the walls of the Museum and in daily life,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “Unprecedented in scope, the exhibition broadly lays out the many ways in which Black artists and cultural figures have engaged and continue to engage with ancient Egypt as a point of reference, inspiration, and connection. Our hope is that it furthers and deepens exploration of this topic.”
“This is a modern history of how an ancient civilisation became a wellspring of inspiration for Black creatives to craft a unifying identity after generations of it being underrepresented and undervalued,” said Ford Foundation President Darren Walker. “This is an exhibition that only The Met can do by pulling inspiration from its own collection stretching back 5,000 years and connecting it to today and our communities in New York City and beyond.”
“The exhibition takes its title from The Met’s painting Flight into Egypt (1923), an emblem of fugitively and timeless creativity by the expatriate artist Henry Ossawa Tanner—the first internationally recognised Black American painter—who traveled to Egypt in 1897, and 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),” said Akili Tommasino, Curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Met and the curator of the exhibition. “Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now challenges Eurocentric constructions of ancient Egypt, offering a more expansive history that celebrates the contributions of cultural figures of African descent.”
Beginning in the late 19th century, the era of emancipation, Black Americans started to look to ancient Egypt as evidence of an undeniably great ancient African culture to ennoble Black identities, having been systematically stripped of any knowledge of specific African heritage through the transatlantic slave trade, generational enslavement, and dehumanisation in American civic life and society. This exhibition illuminates how modern Black artists and cultural figures asserted affinity with ancient Egypt—in opposition to the prevailing definition of 19th-century Egyptology that distinguished ancient Egypt from “Black Africa” and instead characterised it as proto-European—from the late 19th century to the efflorescence of Afrocentric visual art during the Harlem Renaissance, to the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s and artistic tendencies of the ensuing decades, to the present day.
While most of the stories in ‘Flight into Egypt’ are about individuals of African descent born and active in the United States, the work of artists of the Caribbean, Egypt, and other African-born artists active in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere indicate the worldwide resonance of ancient Egypt in the African diaspora—the global dispersion of people of African descent. The exhibition presents both well-known and emerging artists, new works and works new to The Met collection, while also reintroducing rarely displayed works of art and resurfacing obscure objects and documents.
Artists whose work is on view include: Terry Adkins, Ghada Amer, Ayé Aton, Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Thomas Biggers, Barbara Higgins Bond, LaKela Brown, Rashida Bumbray, René Burri, George Washington Carver, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Ed Clark, Irene Clark, Robert Colescott, Houston Conwill, Renee Cox, Shani Crowe, Jamal Cyrus, Damien Davis, Karon Davis, Noah Davis, Charles Clarence Dawson, C. Daniel Dawson, Jeff Donaldson, Aaron Douglas, Emory Douglas, Louis Draper, Dream The Combine (Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers), Oasa DuVerney, The Egyptian Lover, Tremaine Emory, Awol Erizku, Fred Eversley, Derek Fordjour, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, Genevieve Gaignard, Ellen Gallagher, Sam Gilliam, Chet Gold, Lauren Halsey, David Hammons, Maren Hassinger, Chester Higgins, EJ Hill, Lonnie Holley, Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, Gregston Hurdle, Iman Issa, Steffani Jemison, Malvin Gray Johnson, Rashid Johnson, Loïs Mailou Jones, Barbara Jones-Hogu, Armia Malak Khalil, Jas Knight, Solange Knowles, Simone Leigh, Glenn Ligon, Maha Maamoun, Eric N. Mack, Julie Mehretu, Mahmoud Mokhtar, Ronald Moody, John W. Mosley, Lorraine O’Grady, Gordon Parks, Kamau Amu Patton, Robert Pruitt, Richard Pryor, Baaba Heru Ankh Ra Semahj Se Ptah, Sun Ra, Betye Saar, Mahmoud Saïd, Addison N. Scurlock, Lorna Simpson, Ming Smith, Tavares Strachan, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Henry Taylor, Mildred Thompson, Kara Walker, Laura Wheeler Waring, William T. Williams, and Fred Wilson.
In a first for The Met, performance will be an integral part of the exhibition in the form of a dedicated gallery. Organised in collaboration with MetLiveArts, the Performance Pyramid will both present a documentary history of Black performance art animated by ancient Egyptian themes and serve as the locus for live performances on select days throughout the run of the exhibition. The Performance Pyramid will be activated by Sidra Bell, Rashida Bumbray, Karon Davis, Zekkereya El-magharbel, Steffani Jemison, Rashid Johnson with Kahil El’Zabar, Clifford Owens, Kaneza Schaal, Luke Stewart, Kamau Amu Patton, and M. Lamar and The Living Earth Show, with others to be announced.
The Performance Pyramid performances are made possible by Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon B. Polsky, and the Adrienne Arsht Fund for Resilience through Art.
‘Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now’ is organised by Akili Tommasino, Curator, with McClain Groff, Research Associate, in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Met.
The exhibition is on view from the 17th of November, 2024, until the 17th of February, 2025. For more information, please visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
