Late-2nd-century CE mosaic panel of preparations for a feast from Carthage, Tunisia, marble, limestone, molten glass, 94 1/2 x 88 5/8 inches (© RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY; photo by Hervé Lewandowski)

Late-2nd-century CE mosaic panel of preparations for a feast from Carthage, Tunisia, marble, limestone, molten glass, 94 1/2 x 88 5/8 inches (© RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY; photo by Hervé Lewandowski)

Late-2nd-century CE mosaic panel of preparations for a feast from Carthage, Tunisia, marble, limestone, molten glass, 94 1/2 x 88 5/8 inches (© RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY; photo by Hervé Lewandowski)

In November, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York opened Africa & Byzantium, its first Byzantine-focused exhibition in nearly 20 years. According to the museum’s press release, the show promises to highlight the impact of “African kingdoms whose pivotal interactions with Byzantium had a lasting impact on the Mediterranean world.” The exhibition emerges from the current moment’s justified desire to offer a corrective to Western- and European-centric narratives but falls tragically short of this goal. It is a shortcoming that cannot be laid entirely at the feet of this particular exhibition’s curators. Andrea Achi, Helen C. Evans, and Kristen Windmuller-Luna have delivered, if nothing else, a superb survey of medieval African art. Instead, the exhibition’s faults are part of a much wider misunderstanding and misappropriation of all things Byzantine. 

The term “Byzantium,” referring to the Christian, Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire, was first used by exiled scholars after the fall of the empire to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 and canonized by the German humanist Hieronymus Wolf in the 16th century. Since then, it has become in essence a colonial imposition, largely used by outsiders who have allowed it to take on both mythic and pejorative baggage. For example, the Greek Christians of the Ottoman Empire ordinarily referred to themselves as Romanoi. The Byzantine Empire became largely the stuff of myth in the Western mind. If we are being honest, it has also taken on mythic proportions for Eastern Christianity, those churches that severed communion with Rome in the Middle Ages over several issues, chief among them the primacy of the papacy. For all, Byzantium is Camelot, but with decent enough archaeology to back up the fantasy.

5th-century CE tapestry from Egypt, linen and wool, 58 X 72 1/16 inches (© Trustees of the British Museum)

5th-century CE tapestry from Egypt, linen and wool, 58 X 72 1/16 inches (© Trustees of the British Museum)

5th-century CE tapestry from Egypt, linen and wool, 58 X 72 1/16 inches (© Trustees of the British Museum)

For Eastern Christians, particularly the Greek and Russian Orthodox, the Byzantine Empire has become the symbol of their lost prestige, a homeland whose return — whether on the Bosporus or the Moskva rivers — is to be hoped, prayed, and fought for. The mourning for this lost empire has created the foundation for Eastern Christianity’s approach to modernity, an approach underlined by a paradigm in which nostalgia is the chief epistemology. 

In the West, the relationship with the Byzantine Empire has taken on the characteristics of other instances of colonial objectification. As Przemysław Marciniak argued in his seminal essay “Oriental like Byzantium: Some Remarks on Similarities Between Byzantinism and Orientalism” (2018) and Yannis Stouraitis in his equally important “Is Byzantinism an Orientalism? Reflections on Byzantium’s Constructed Identities and Debated Ideologies” (2022) have rightly noted, Palestinian writer Edward Said’s concept of “Orientalism” might be the best way to understand the West’s relationship with the Eastern Roman Empire. Because the empire in question was Christian, and even more importantly, Greek-speaking (the Greeks have, after all, been constructed as the “inventors” of the West since the Renaissance), many have been slow to see this similarity. Nonetheless, it is difficult not to notice how Western discourses essentialize the Eastern Roman Empire, and by extension, all of the Eastern Christian cultural zone. Even the word “byzantine” has become an adjective to describe situations or systems that are excessively complicated or particularly incomprehensible. Furthermore, Western descriptions of Orthodox Christianity (particularly common among Western converts to Orthodoxy) posit the faith to be unchanging, a nod to the static nature of Eastern cultures assumed by orientalist discourse. As noble as their intentions might be, current exhibitions seem to repeat many of these tropes. 

“Saint Jean-Baptiste” (© Musée Khanenko; photo courtesy Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts)

“Saint Jean-Baptiste” (© Musée Khanenko; photo courtesy Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts)

“Saint Jean-Baptiste” (© Musée Khanenko; photo courtesy Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts)

At a basic level, The Met exhibition’s focus on the role of the African continent in the Global Middle Ages is a necessary corrective to the ways that region’s artistic and cultural contributions have been written out of Western histories. While the exhibition embraces this corrective stance, it also continues uncritically to use the term “Byzantium” to refer to one of its subjects. An introductory wall text explains with no further explanation, “We use the term ‘Byzantium’ to refer to the eastern Roman Empire, which ruled until the fifteenth century.” It is ultimately a missed opportunity to, even with a single line of text, question the borders between “the West and the Rest,” and our modern expectations of identity and difference.

Coinciding with Africa & Byzantium, many major institutions have been exhibiting work by Ukrainian artists in response to the Russian invasion. For example, the Louvre Museum, which has held many important works from Kyiv’s Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts since December of 2022, displayed some of these works in an exhibition titled The Origins of the Sacred Image. Interestingly, none of the five pieces that were part of the exhibition originated in Ukraine; all are products of the medieval Eastern Roman Empire, the empire we now call Byzantium. This decision to highlight the work from this mythologized empire, as opposed to work produced during the same period by, say, the Kyivan Rus’, both indicates the Western fascination with the former empire and highlights how Western understanding of Eastern Christian history demands a static and collapsed narrative reminiscent of other orientalist discourses. 

“Vierge à l’Enfant” (© Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum)

“Vierge à l’Enfant” (© Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum)

“Vierge à l’Enfant” (© Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum)

Meanwhile in Russia, Eastern Christian art has also been at the center of the response to the war. In August, the Museum of the Moscow Kremlin closed an exhibition titled Heavenly Host: Image and Worship, which focuses on “holy warriors in Russian art over a thousand years.” The press release notes, “These works serve as living evidence that in all periods of Russian history, up to our time, the images and feats of the holy warriors remain unfading symbols, giving consolation, setting an example, and giving hope,” a nod to the value of propaganda in promoting an exhibition. Unlike the exhibition at the Louvre, the art on display in Moscow was all produced in Russia. The show, however, places a significant emphasis on the “holy warriors” inherited by Russian art from the Eastern Roman Empire. In doing so, it joins a discourse that sees the Eastern Christian cultural tradition, of which it is part, as static and mythic.

It is, of course, harder to see how a Christian, and largely European, culture is being subjected to colonialist discourse, in no small part because we have simply not been conditioned to look for such “othering” there. Nonetheless, it does exist. When we notice it and name it, we help ourselves unthread how culture, art, and history interact with power and render us complicit in propagating narratives that undermine our ability to understand the complexity of others. The horrific and ongoing war in Ukraine is an awful reason for the West to address how it views a cultural tradition that is both familiar and foreign. Still, it is a conversation that can only help us understand further how we engage with histories that are not our own. .

Editor’s Note, 1/3/2024, 11:28am EST: A previous version of this article misnamed the exhibition Africa & Byzantium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The error has been corrected.