The Caravans of Gold workshop will be held as a virtual online event, on Thursday, May 28, 3:30 – 6:00pm
Gold from West Africa was the engine that drove the movement of things, people, and ideas across Africa, Europe, and the Middle East in an interconnected medieval world. As the incredible works in this exhibition show, it is not possible to understand the emergence of the early modern world without this West African story. The Caravans of Gold exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art calls on what archaeologists have termed “the archaeological imagination”—the act of recapturing the past through surviving traces—to present a critical rethinking of the medieval period. Here, rare and precious archaeological fragments are seen side by side, bringing new understanding to complete works of art from the medieval period.
This event will be hosted online at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. It will include a virtual tour of the exhibition, two interactive sessions with teachers with classroom and exhibition materials, and a scholar lecture by Prof Khaled Esseissah. This workshop is a collaboration among the Education Department of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, and Howard University’s Center for African Studies.
Register here.
This program is made possible by a Title VI grant from the United States Department of Education, which is funding National Resource Centers on Africa at Howard University and on the Middle East at Georgetown University, and by support from the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown.