ABOVE IMAGE: Aïda Muluneh, Putting It Together, from The World is 9 series, 2016-2019. Inkjet print. Museum purchase by exchange. 2023.33.2. Peabody Essex Museum. Courtesy of the artist. © Aïda Muluneh.
Ethiopia at the Crossroads is a sensory-rich exhibition that celebrates the vibrant culture and artistic traditions of one East African country.
Visitors can explore nearly 2,000 years of Ethiopian art and culture through more than 200 objects, including painted religious icons, illuminated manuscripts, gospel books, coins, metalwork and carvings, paired with works by renowned contemporary Ethiopian artists, including Wosene Worke Kosrof, Julie Mehretu, Helina Metaferia, Aïda Muluneh and Elias Sime. This nationally-touring exhibition is on view at PEM through July 7, 2024. The curators for the PEM presentation – Karen Kramer, The Stuart W. and Elizabeth F. Pratt Curator of Native American and Oceanic Art and Culture and Lydia Peabody, Curator-at-Large — sat down to chat about their favorite objects in the exhibition and explain what makes this portion of PEM’s African Art collection special.
Q: Why is PEM’s collection of Ethiopian art significant?
Karen: Our collection of Ethiopian art is one of the largest outside of Ethiopia. We house around 500 Ethiopian artworks, which is a remarkable amount. In 1978, PEM received a gift from Charles and Elizabeth Langmuir, whose involvement in the Institute of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Abäba beginning in 1966 — just three years after the Institute’s establishment — led to their dedicated collecting of hundreds of painted icons and processional crosses, hand crosses and neck crosses. This gift was transformative. We also have artworks that predate the Langmuir collection, and other objects created outside of a church context, such as contemporary ceramics produced by Betä Ǝsraʾel Jews and 19th-century headrests made and used by Oromo community members in southwestern Ethiopia.
Lydia: Echoing Karen that PEM’s Langmuir collection is really significant. These objects were last on view at PEM in 1978 in Ethiopia: The Christian Art of an African Nation, which subsequently toured the country through the early 1980s. Twenty-eight Langmuir objects, including processional crosses, hand crosses and painted icons, can be seen again in Ethiopia at the Crossroads alongside other outstanding PEM objects and works on loan.
Q: How can visitors understand the context of this show, even if they don’t know much about Ethiopia?
Karen: We really wanted our visitors to walk away from this exhibition understanding just how varied and complex Ethiopian history is, and to provide them with a sense of the people and place. We worked hard to find ways to immerse visitors in many of the sights, scents and experiences of Ethiopian history and culture. We evoke architectural elements from churches through light projections and painted the gallery in the colors of the Ethiopian flag (red, gold and green).
We also wanted to situate Ethiopia in relation to Africa and the surrounding countries and waterways, and share some of the stunning vistas and landscapes.
The Ethiopia at the Crossroads exhibition gallery, 2024. Photo by Kim Indresano/PEM.
A short video about Ethiopia in our first gallery starts with a satellite view of the continent and zooms in on Ethiopia to show some snapshots of the people and places: the breathtaking rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, monasteries at Lake Tana, a church procession, a coffee ceremony, wildlife like crocodiles and camels, Oromo body painting traditions in the Southwest…it’s a real visual feast that we hope grounds our visitors in this amazing place and gives them a flavor of the artwork in the galleries.
The Ethiopia at the Crossroads exhibition gallery, 2024. Photo by Kim Indresano/PEM.
Lydia: One of my favorite parts of the exhibition is walking into the third gallery that evokes a marketplace! Addis Abäba, the capital of Ethiopia, houses the largest outdoor marketplace in all of Africa. You can get anything and everything at the market — spices, food, clothing, you name it. It’s a meeting place of people, sounds, exchanges and connections. The colorful scrims hanging from the ceiling are intended to evoke this sense of place, as well as the beautiful display of Harari baskets in the center of the gallery. These baskets are made by Harari women and are both utilitarian and decorative. They are incredibly colorful and complex in their designs!
Q: Why does the exhibition include signage about provenance?
Karen: Foreigners started collecting Ethiopian art on a significant scale in the 19th century. There are often no records that indicate how and when collectors acquired Ethiopian art. Members of foreign militaries seized and looted many Ethiopian objects in war and on punitive expeditions over the past two centuries. British troops, for example, stole sacred tablets and manuscripts and also looted many other cultural items during the Battle of Maqdala (or Magdala) in 1868. Taken without their owners’ consent, these objects represent a fundamental part of Ethiopia and its cultural heritage.
Artist in Ethiopia, Processional Cross, 15th century. Bronze. Museum purchase with funds provided by the W. Alton Jones Foundation Acquisition Fund, 1996. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.
Since the 1970 UNESCO Convention that helps prevent illicit import, export and trafficking of looted cultural property, it is increasingly incumbent on museums to hold themselves to high standards of ethical stewardship and responsibility. Project staff carefully combed through records for each object in Ethiopia at the Crossroads to ensure that we did not include anything that came from a pillaging context. As we note in the wall text, for many of the works exhibited, little information about their past is known, and further research remains to be done.
Artist in Ethiopia, Processional Cross, 15th century. Bronze. Museum purchase with funds provided by the W. Alton Jones Foundation Acquisition Fund, 1996. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.
Q: What is your favorite object from this exhibition and why?
Karen: I have so many favorites! One of them is a sənsul, or folding book, dating to the 15th or early 16th century. Its central image is Saint George, the patron saint of Ethiopia. While the object itself is rare and beautiful and I love it because it is a really old object of personal devotion, I also love it because of its place in popular culture. The image of Saint George from this PEM object appears on American singer-songwriter Paul Simon’s highly acclaimed 1986 Graceland album. Controversies about the album notwithstanding, the image is now among the most circulated of all the Ethiopian images in the world.
Lydia: It really is hard to pick just one! I’ve been really entranced by Julie Mehretu’s Six Bardos: Luminous Appearance, which is located towards the end of our exhibition. So many objects in the show are figurative (showing human beings) so this work stops me in my tracks. It’s a larger-than-life abstract print that is exemplary of the artist’s mark making: Through layers of drawn and air-sprayed lines, gestures of urban scrawl and caricatural body parts emerge from one another in varying broad and fluid marks. Shadowy white lines seem to converge like ghosts in the background, giving this print a predominantly painterly presence. The first time I took a photo of it on the wall, those white lines appeared to hover on another plane — almost like an optical illusion. And the work wasn’t even lit yet! Everytime I look at it, I see something different.
Q: In 2024, Ethiopia had its first national pavilion at the Venice Biennale with artist Tesfaye Urgessa. What else is currently happening with the contemporary Ethiopian art movement?
Karen: Contemporary Ethiopian artists, including those in the Ethiopian diaspora, are building on a centuries-old painting tradition that reaches back to body art as well as painting in churches and liturgical manuscripts. In 1958, the founding of the School of Fine Art and Design at Addis Abäba University brought about a modernist art movement just eight years after Emperor Haile Selassie established the school. Artwork by Wosene Worke Kosrof, a painter in that early wave of modernist artists who came from that fine arts school, is in the exhibition, as is work by his teacher and half-brother Alexander “Skunder” Boghossian.
Once the Ethiopian monarchy was overthrown by the Derg military regime in 1974, thousands of Ethiopians sought safety and left home. Artists more blatantly stepped outside of Ethiopian representational painting conventions and began fusing Western and non-Western content.
Aïda Muluneh, Addis Neger, from the Mirror of the Soul series, 2019. Inkjet print. Museum purchase by exchange. 2023.33.4. Peabody Essex Museum. Courtesy of the artist. © Aïda Muluneh.
Today, through figuration in painting and experimentation in abstraction, as well as textiles, photography and performance art, new generations of Ethiopian artists are bringing their work to a global audience.
Aïda Muluneh, Addis Neger, from the Mirror of the Soul series, 2019. Inkjet print. Museum purchase by exchange. 2023.33.4. Peabody Essex Museum. Courtesy of the artist. © Aïda Muluneh.
Lydia: Ethiopian artists across the diaspora are taking the global stage. Besides the pavilion in the 2024 Venice Biennale, we can see this with Merikokeb Berhanu’s beautiful presentation in the international Central Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2022. Additionally, Karen and I had the wonderful opportunity to acquire a suite of six stunning photographs by Aïda Muluneh, who was born in Ethiopia and educated in the United States. She has studios in Addis Abäba and Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, where she is fundamental in the organization of several contemporary photography art fairs. Muluneh’s work features women in bold, primary colors often surrounded by symbolic objects or performing traditional gestures. Seen throughout our exhibition, these photographs importantly mark the first acquisition of a contemporary Ethiopian artist for PEM’s permanent collection.
Q: What are some interesting or surprising things visitors might discover in these works?
Karen: One of the biggest surprises to me when I started working on this project, not being a scholar of Ethiopian art, is the fact that Judaism in Ethiopia predates Christianity. It makes sense when you look at a map and see where Ethiopia is located — it’s just about 2,000 miles from Jerusalem – but I never knew that. Since the 1980s, nearly 160,000 Betä Ǝsraʾeli have emigrated to Israel, like their forebear Menelik I, due to ongoing religious persecution, drought and famine. But a small community of Betä Ǝsraʾel Jews still live in the northern Lake Tana region, and many scholars skip over this fact. And thousands of other Ethiopians have Jewish heritage.
Lydia: I also loved learning about the history of Judaism in Ethiopia! I was also struck by how singular Ethiopian artists were and are in their visions. As a curator of modern and contemporary art, my understanding of Byzantine art was very European and very white. Lots of “Madonna and Child.” And you can’t forget the gold! For me, Ethiopia at the Crossroads is Byzantine art like I have never seen it before. While Ethiopian artists influenced European artists and took inspiration from other Christian art, their artistic production of icons with figures with darker skin, for example, reflect their African perspective and lived experience. I love how this work complicates the narrative and shines a light on the important contribution of African artists working in medieval to modern times.
Q: What do you hope visitors will take away from this exhibition?
Karen: I hope they gain a greater appreciation for Ethiopia’s many geographic regions, the diversity of cultures (and more than 75 different ethnicities) and its vast and wide-ranging histories that continue to center on religion, art and global trade.
Lydia: I hope visitors take away an understanding of the vastness of Ethiopian art, history and cultures. As well as the importance of Ethiopia within a global context. All three of the major Abrahamic religions have deep connections to Ethiopia, whose location at the intersection of Africa, Asia and Europe played a critical role in the exchanging of ideas and influence. We hope visitors come back frequently to learn more on each trip!
Follow along on social media using #EthiopiaCrossroads.
Ethiopia at the Crossroads is co-organized by the Peabody Essex Museum, the Walters Art Museum and the Toledo Museum of Art. The exhibition is made possible by two major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom and a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (MA-253352-OMS-23). The exhibition at PEM is made possible by the generosity of Carolyn and Peter S. Lynch and The Lynch Foundation and The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. We also thank James B. and Mary Lou Hawkes, Chip and Susan Robie, and Timothy T. Hilton as supporters of the Exhibition Innovation Fund. We recognize the generosity of the East India Marine Associates of the Peabody Essex Museum.
Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Lydia Peabody, Curator-at-Large
Serving as Curator-at-Large at the Peabody Essex Museum, Lydia Peabody advises on special projects by contributing expertise in modern and contemporary art. She conceives and curates exhibitions, authors publications, organizes programs and diversifies the museum’s collection through the acquisition of artwork by emerging artists, women artists and artists of color, such as Bethany Collins, Hank Willis Thomas, Steve Locke, Frances F. Denny and Gio Swaby.
Peabody is the curator of long term installation projects Bethany Collins: America, A Hymnal (2023-) and Vanessa Platacis: Taking Place (2019-). She is co-curator of The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming (2021) and contributor to Patrick Kelly: Runway of Love (2021), Each/Other: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger (2021), and PlayTime (2017). Peabody is coordinating curator of Gio Swaby: Fresh Up (2023), Hans Hofman: The Nature of Abstraction (2019), and the nationally touring Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle (2020-2021) — to which she was a significant contributor to the exhibition and award winning publication. She is currently working on Ethiopia at the Crossroads, opening in the spring of 2024, by overseeing the inclusion of work by renowned contemporary artists such as Julie Mehretu and Aïda Muluneh.
Peabody holds a dual masters degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in modern and contemporary art history, theory, and criticism, and art administration and policy, and a bachelors of arts administration from Simmons University. Peabody is an associate professor of art history at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Mass. In 2021, she was appointed to the board of The Wolf Kahn Foundation, where she chairs the legacy committee. Her writing can be seen with Demeter Press, Boston Art Review, Hyperallergic and Artforum.
Follow @lydslovesart_ on Instagram.
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