| SALEM – The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) invites visitors to explore the vibrant culture and rich artistic legacy of Ethiopia in a new exhibition making its New England debut this spring. Co-organized by PEM, the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and the Toledo Museum of Art, Ethiopia at the Crossroads is the first major touring exhibition to examine Ethiopian art in a global context. The exhibition features more than 200 objects made over the span of 2,000 years, including religious icons, illuminated manuscripts, gospel books, coins, metalwork and carvings. Historic art objects are paired with contemporary works — including recent PEM acquisitions — by Ethiopian artists such as Wosene Worke Kosrof, Julie Mehretu, Helina Metaferia, Aïda Muluneh and Elias Sime.
Seated in the Horn of Africa between Europe and the Middle East, Ethiopia is an intersection of diverse cultures, religions and climates. Ethiopia at the Crossroads celebrates the enormous impact this often-overlooked African nation has had on the world by looking at the evolution of the region’s history, creativity and cross-cultural exchange over the centuries. PEM’s African art collection was one of the first of its kind in the U.S. and includes rare and important holdings of Ethiopian icons and processional crosses. The exhibition includes important works from the co-organizing museums and is further strengthened by key loans from American, European and Ethiopian lenders.
“At its core, this exhibition centers the profound foundational role Ethiopia has played in world culture and the humanities,” said Karen Kramer, PEM’s Stuart W. and Elizabeth F. Pratt Curator of Native American and Oceanic Art and Culture. “Arising from a diverse, multiethnic, multifaith society, global intersections influence these artworks. At the same time, we see a distinct aesthetic emerge that belongs to Ethiopia alone. This exhibition provides a window onto a layered and complex region of the world whose rich cultural and artistic traditions have so much to teach us all. What is so exciting to me is not only having these amazing historic works together in one place, but also showing the continuum of Ethiopian artistic achievement through the present.”
In the galleries, visitors will discover a sensory-rich experience featuring the sights, sounds and scents reflecting Ethiopia’s unique context. Although Ethiopia has endured multiple revolutions and upheavals over time, it has the distinction of maintaining its independence as one of the only African nations to resist colonization. Videos in the exhibition feature members of the local Ethiopian diaspora community, which includes an estimated 12,000 people in the Greater Boston area alone. |
