Art: ‘Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

A triumphant new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art explores a little-studied facet of the art world worthy of close attention. Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now is an expansive survey of almost a century and half of Black artists engaging with the art and iconography of ancient Egypt.

Into Africa

More specifically, the exhibition records, in plentiful detail through 10 themed galleries, Black artists’ reclamation of ancient Egypt as part of present-day African American heritage. For centuries Western anthropologists and historians have viewed ancient Egypt, with its millennia of astounding art, architecture, and culture, as proto-European, pointedly distinguishing it from sub-Saharan Africa. It’s easy to forget that while Egypt may be part of the “Middle East,” it’s an African nation.

The exhibit works on multiple levels. It displays works by artists of the African diaspora in a thorough and absorbing context that exposes layers of meaning in the art. It’s historically enlightening, situating the artworks in wider Black culture. And it’s a valuable exemplar of the museum’s increased focus on modern and contemporary art generally.

The iconic sculptural image of Nefertiti turns up in many places. In Egyptian Heritage (1953) Loïs Mailou Jones conjoins a self-portrait with pharaonic motifs and the head of Nefertiti, while Fred Wilson depicts her in a white-to-black rainbow.

Lorraine O’Grady uses photographic portraiture to explicitly associate Egyptian statuary with Black American women, while Irene Clark depicts a dark-skinned Cleopatra in a painting from around the 1940s.

Flight into Egypt

In the painting that gives the exhibition its title, Harlem Renaissance artist Henry Ossawa Tanner, a Pennsylvania native, paralleled the flight of Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus with his own status as an expatriate in Europe. “I cannot fight prejudice and paint at the same time,” he said in 1891 – a sentiment many Black creators may empathize with.

Facsimiles of the covers of magazines that catered to the Black community over many decades occupy the walls of a gallery dedicated to study and exploration. Another gallery displays album covers that used Ancient Egyptian iconography.

One gallery is devoted to views of ancient Egypt by modern-day Egyptian artists. It includes a compelling (and often amusing) video collage from 1960s–1980s Egyptian movies with ancient Egyptian backdrops.

Sculpture

A sculpture by Mahmoud Mokhtar (1891–1934) reflects this seminal 20th-century Egyptian artist’s engagement with ancient Egypt.

Reflections of similar imagery abound in the work of Black American artists.

A painting depicts Michelle Obama as a towering figure in a pose borrowed from ancient Egyptian sculpture.

The above is just a tiny sampling. Plan to devote at least an hour to this exhibition on your next visit to the Met.

In what is described as a first for the museum, one gallery will be dedicated to live performances as well as a documentary history of Black performance art animated by ancient Egyptian themes.

Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Nov. 17, 2024 and runs until Feb. 17, 2025.

All photos by Oren Hope except where noted