At the National Museum of African Art: Caravans of Gold
Lloyd de Beer, 4 February 2021
In the opening scene of his television series Civilisation (1969), Kenneth Clark admits that while he can’t define exactly what civilisation is, he knows it when he sees it. The camera pans towards Notre Dame Cathedral as if to say ‘this is it.’ For Clark, the artistic achievement of the medieval period was European. The sophisticated cultures flourishing simultaneously in...