The exhibition ‘Flight into Egypt’

The influence of ancient Egypt on African-American art, according to the Met
The exhibition ‘Flight into Egypt’, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, explores the influence on artists and cultural figures through photographs, paintings, literary works and audiovisual pieces
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Met) presents an exhibition that explores the influence of ancient Egypt on artists and cultural figures of African-American communities through photographs, paintings, literary works and audiovisual pieces.
The exhibition ‘Flight into Egypt’, which will be open to the public until February 17, 2025, takes a tour of 150 years of artistic and cultural production produced mainly by African-American artists who at the end of the 19th century began to consider Egypt as one of the great sources of inspiration for African cultures.
It is divided into ten thematic sections that begin in 1876 and study how “black artists and cultural figures defended their affinity with ancient Egypt, opposing the predominant definition that differentiated the country (Egypt) from so-called black Africa,” explained Amili Tommasino, curator of the exhibition.
Impact on the diaspora

One of the most outstanding works in the exhibition is ‘Kings of Egypt II’, an oil on canvas by Jean-Michel Basquiat in which the artist - born in New York but of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent - paints male faces on a black background and writes names of pharaohs such as Ramses II or Amenophis III.
This piece is part of the ‘Kings and Queens’ section, which welcomes the public with five busts of (Queen) Nefertiti made by Fred Wilson with a color palette ranging from white to dark brown and which serve to vindicate the beauty and empowerment of African-American culture.
In this area, there is also a monumental bronze sculpture in which the American artist Simone Leigh portrays the writer and historian Sharifa Rhodes Pitts with her breasts uncovered and her hands resting on her long skirt, similar to the clothing worn by ancient Egyptian officials.
Meanwhile, in the section ‘Egyptology and the color line’, the frequent identification of Egyptian culture with Europe and the United States is questioned through the work of the writer and abolitionist of slavery Frederick Douglass, who investigated the racial barrier that permeated the studies of ancient Egypt, something he called “the color line”.

For this reason, several books that are key to this approach are also on display, such as ‘The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality’, by Cheikh Anta Diop, or ‘Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization’, by Martín Bernal.
The exhibition also explores the influence of Egypt on abstract art: the ‘Nu nile abstraction’ room displays a series of paintings and sculptures around a large pyramid in the centre, in blue and white, made by Rashid Johnson with materials such as black soap, wax, vinyl, brass, books and wood, among others.

African-American music is the protagonist of the next section, ‘A new song’, which takes a tour of the history of musicians and their relationship with ancient Egypt: vinyl records with covers depicting pyramids or pharaohs are on display here, such as ‘Best of Earth Wind and Fire’, by the American band of the same name.

The most notable part of this section is a small, completely dark room in which a pharaonic bust hangs from the ceiling and spins like a disco ball while the documentary ‘Black Journal’ by Alice Coltrane is projected on the wall.

Amili Tommasino stressed the importance of the Met, “historically focused on Eurocentrism,” organizing this “innovative exhibition that highlights Afrocentric perspectives of history.”
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