Exhibition of the Year

‘Ethiopia at the Crossroads’
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
3 December 2023–3 March

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With ‘Ethiopia at the Crossroads’, the Walters Art Museum brought the largest exhibition of historic Ethiopian art and culture ever assembled outside the country to viewers in the United States. Thanks to the perseverance and dedication of curator Christine Sciacca, this stunning exhibition delighted viewers in Baltimore, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem and the Toledo Museum of Art this year. On display were objects of the highest quality, ranging from Aksumite gold coins and illuminated medieval manuscripts to an incomparable range of 15th- to 19th-century icon and mural paintings, as well as an exquisite selection of ancient neck, hand and processional crosses. These were shown with comparative works from Pharaonic and Coptic Egypt, Late Rome and Byzantium, Sabaean Yemen, Armenia and Syria. 

The exhibition has been a game changer, coinciding with a quarter century of growing interest in Ethiopian art and culture in North America. While previous international exhibitions have come and gone, this one is virtually permanent, living on in the Walters’ own growing collections and in the handsomely illustrated and well-researched catalogue that accompanied the show. Being a contributor to the catalogue myself, I was determined to see the exhibition first hand, which I did both at the Walters and in Toledo. What an experience, seeing the objects carefully and professionally displayed, yet presented differently at each venue. Building on the precedent set by curator Marilyn Heldman for the ‘African Zion’ exhibition at the Walters a half century ago, Sciacca, along with Sophie Ong, the curator at Toledo, returned personally to the Institute of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa, and to private collectors, to complete this wide-ranging display. It is exceptional, unique and without question the foremost museum exhibition of the year. It should bring about a new appreciation for Ethiopia’s 3,000-year-old literate and material culture.

Courtesy Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Michael Gervers is professor of art history at the University of Toronto.