Ethiopia at the Crossroads
Division of Public Programs
Artist in Ethiopia, The Virgin and Child with Archangels, Scenes from the Life of Christ, and Saints, early 17th century. Tempera on panel. Museum purchase with funds provided by the W. Alton Jones Foundation Acquisition Fund, 1996. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.
Peabody Essex Museum
Artist in Ethiopia, The Virgin and Child with Archangels, Scenes from the Life of Christ, and Saints, early 17th century. Tempera on panel. Museum purchase with funds provided by the W. Alton Jones Foundation Acquisition Fund, 1996. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.
Peabody Essex Museum
Ethiopia at the Crossroads—the first major art exhibition in America to examine an array of Ethiopian cultural and artistic traditions from their origins to the present day and to chart the ways in which engaging with surrounding cultures manifested in Ethiopian artistic practices —features more than 200 objects spanning 1,750 years of Ethiopian artistic, cultural, and religious history.
The NEH-funded traveling exhibition examines Ethiopian art as representative of the nation’s notable history at the intersection of diverse climates, religions, and cultures, and demonstrates the enormous cultural significance of this often-overlooked African nation through the themes of cross-cultural exchange and the human role in the creation and movement of art objects.
The Washington Post describes Ethiopia at the Crossroads as a “sensory feast” and notes the Walters Art Museum’s collaborations with local Ethiopian communities in Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, DC, in mounting the exhibit.
Ethiopia at the Crossroads opened at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, before traveling to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. The exhibition will finish its tour at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio from August to November 2024.