The Caravans of Gold Workshop

The Caravans of Gold Workshop was a virtual event hosted by the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art on May 28, 2020.

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.

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.

More: https://calendar.howard.edu/ca....lendars/center-afric