N VIEW AT The Metropolitan Museum of Art through March 3, 2024, “Africa & Byzantium” is an important salvo in the drive to rebalance the myriad cultures of the vast and diverse African continent against the scholarship of the West, which has often relegated those cultures to the status of vassal states and suppliers of resources for the “civilizations” of Rome, Byzantium, and the Islamic empires. Comprised of almost 200 objects of delectable beauty, “Africa & Byzantium” is also comprehensive in scope, revealing the influence of Byzantine art and culture in North and East Africa from the 4th through the 15th century and beyond.
