U.S. exhibit on ancient North African art ignores ancient blacks

Jet, March 7, 1994

An exhibition of early seventh century North African art and jewelry titled From Hannibal to Saint Augustine will cross America this year but millions of viewers will be unaware of a Black presence.

Sponsored by the United States Information Agency (USIA), the exhibition features 118 articles on the subject borrowed from the Musee du Louvre in Paris including marble sculpture, mosaics, jewelry and vases.

But nowhere in the program or promotion is there mention of Black African involvement. And Molefi Asante, director of Temple University's department of African American Studies, says: "What makes this show so misleading is that both Hannibal and Saint Augustine were Black Africans. No question about it!"

However, Monique Seefried, curator of Near Eastern at the Emory University Michael C. Carlos Museum, where the exhibit opened, disagreed and told JET that at that time in history, Black Africans were prevented from reaching the Mediterranean region because of the Sahara desert.

The exhibit's program asserts: "The Mediterranean Sea could be easily crossed but the Sahara Desert was an insurmountable barrier. Only after the Arabs brought camels to the region in the seventh century A.D. did North Africa begin to develop links to the rest of the Africa continent."

But Asante, describing Hannibal as "the greatest of the African military leaders of his day," said that Hannibal could not have been an Arab because he was born more than 600 years before the coming of the Arabs to conquer Africa.

Asante said that as the Bishop of Africa, Saint Augustine taught at the University of Carthage, becoming the greatest early Catholic scholar and writer. His father was a practitioner of the African religions but his mother became a Catholic and he followed her into that religion.

The exhibit will move to the Crocker Museum of Art in Sacramento, CA, in September and to the Milwaukee Museum of Art in December.