The Unwavering Divide

There are myriad divides that exist for ancient African collections in North American and European museums, but one of the most stark and historically burdened is the division which isolates ancient Egyptian and Nubian art from the artistic productions of Africa across all other periods and places. ¹ The reasons for such divides range from the departmental organisation of museums themselves to decisions around which collection an object should be accessioned into, especially if it has an intersectional biography. ² In the first case, the departmental organisation of ancient African collections in museums is a by-product of the collecting and classification methods of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which are rooted in western imperial and colonial rhetoric that foreground the eurocentrism pervading the field of art history. In many museums, European collections are still largely upheld as the pinnacle of a global artistic canon; a marked value system that prioritises these artistic practices is clear when considering artworks of African collections compared to their European contemporaries, especially ancient and medieval works from African regions other than from the Nile Valley. ³