The PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature is an annual week-long literary festival held in New York City and Los Angeles . The festival was founded by Salman Rushdie , Esther Allen , and Michael Roberts and was launched in 2005. The festival includes events, readings, conversations, and debates that showcase international literature and new writers. The festival is produced by PEN America , a nonprofit organization that works to advance literature, promote free expression, and foster international literary fellowship.
199-576: The inaugural event was held in New York City from April 18 to April 25, 2005. Participating authors came from 45 countries and included: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie , Jonathan Ames , Paul Auster , Breyten Breytenbach , Nuruddin Farah , Gish Jen , Ryszard Kapuściński , Khaled Mattawa , Azar Nafisi , Elif Shafak , Wole Soyinka , Ali Bader and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o . PEN America offers audio downloads and photos from select events on their website. Issue 7 of
398-655: A MacArthur Fellowship in 2008 and induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017. Adichie was born on 15 September 1977 and raised in Enugu , Nigeria, as the fifth out of six children to Igbo parents. Bearing Amanda as her English name , she made up the Igbo name "Chimamanda" in the 1990s to keep her legal English name and conform with the Igbo Christian naming customs. Adichie's father, James Nwoye Adichie,
597-527: A MacArthur Fellowship that same year, plus other academic prizes, including the 2011–2012 Fellowship of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University . While studying in the US, Adichie started researching and writing her first novel, Purple Hibiscus . She wrote it during a period of homesickness and set it in her childhood home of Nsukka. The book explores post-colonial Nigeria during
796-407: A TED Talk titled "The Danger of a Single Story." In the talk, Adichie expressed her concern that accepting one version of a story perpetrates myths and stereotypes because it fails to recognise the complexities of human life and situations. She argued that under-representation of the layers that make up a person's identity or culture deprives them of their humanity. Adichie has continued to reuse
995-538: A "Buy Nigerian to Grow the Naira" campaign after the Nigerian naira experienced a devaluation. She set up an Instagram account that her nieces Chisom and Amaka managed, and gained around 600,000 followers. Adichie's goal was to help protect Nigeria's cultural heritage by showcasing the quality of craftsmanship and use of innovative hand-made techniques, materials and textiles being used by Nigerian designers. Just as important
1194-698: A Department of Drawings was established under Jacob Bean, who served as curator until 1992, during which time the museum's collection of drawings nearly doubled in size, with strengths in French and Italian works. Finally, in 1993, a unified Department of Drawings and Prints was created for all works on paper, chaired by George Goldner , who sought to rectify collecting imbalances by adding works by Dutch, Flemish, Central European, Danish, and British artists. The department has been led by Nadine Orenstein , Drue Heinz Curator in Charge since 2015. A particularly important recent gift
1393-564: A Department of Scientific Research. The permanent collection includes works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt ; paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters ; and an extensive collection of American and modern art . The Met maintains extensive holdings of African , Asian , Oceanian , Byzantine , and Islamic art . The museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments , costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from around
1592-669: A Muslim character. For Igbo characters, she invents names that convey Igbo naming traditions and depict the character's traits, personality, and social connections. For example, in Half of a Yellow Sun , the character's name Ọlanna literally means "God's Gold", but Nwankwọ points out that ọla means precious and nna means father (which can be understood as either God the father or a parent). By shunning popular Igbo names, Adichie intentionally imbues her characters with multi-ethnic, gender-plural, global personas. She typically does not use English names for African characters but, when she does, it
1791-482: A Single Story" and "We Should All Be Feminists" were also aired at some of the events and discussed in the question-and-answer segment following her presentations. In 2015, Adichie wrote a letter to a friend and posted it on Facebook in 2016. Comments on the post convinced her to turn to a book, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions , which was an expansion of her ideas on how to raise
1990-507: A Single Story" had received more than 27 million views. As of 1 September 2023, the talk is one of the top 25 most viewed TED Talks of all time. According to Lisa Allardice, a journalist writing for The Guardian , Adichie became the "poster girl for modern feminism after her 2012 TED Talk 'We Should All Be Feminists' went stratospheric and was distributed in book form to every 16-year-old in Sweden". Adichie has become "a global feminist icon" and
2189-604: A Single Story", she conveys the message that there is no single truth about the past. Adichie is encouraging her readers to recognise their own responsibility to one another, and the injustice that exists in the world. Nigerian scholar Stanley Ordu classifies Adichie's feminism as womanist because her analysis of patriarchal systems goes beyond sexist treatment of women and anti-male bias , looking instead at socio-economic, political and racial struggles women face to survive and cooperate with men. For example, in Purple Hibiscus ,
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#17328726413102388-468: A Yellow Sun , which she researched for four years, including studying Buchi Emecheta ' s 1982 novel Destination Biafra . The book was published in 2006 by Anchor Books , a trade-paperback imprint of Alfred A. Knopf , which also released the book later under its Vintage Canada label. It was also published in France as L'autre moitié du soleil in 2008, by Éditions Gallimard . The novel expands on
2587-683: A Yellow Sun and the stories collected in The Thing Around Your Neck , these themes symbolise the universality of power, or the impact and manifestation in society of its misuse. Adichie, in a 2014 article written for Elle , described becoming aware of a Western social norm that "women who wanted to be taken seriously were supposed to substantiate their seriousness with a studied indifference to appearance." The western concept contrasted with her upbringing in Nigeria, because in West Africa
2786-524: A Yellow Sun showed that that market could care about African histories". In an earlier article published in Brittle Paper , he stated that Half of a Yellow Sun ' s paperback release in 2006 sold 500,000 copies, the benchmark of commercial success for a book, by October 2009 in the UK alone. Her novel Americanah sold 500,000 copies in the US within two years of its 2013 release. As of 2022 , "The Danger of
2985-447: A Yellow Sun , and The Thing Around Your Neck such as stereotypical perceptions of Black women's physical appearance, their hair and their objectification. Dear Ijeawele stresses the political importance of using African names, rejecting colorism , exercising freedom of expression in how they wear their hair (including rejecting patronising curiosity about it) and avoiding commodification , such as marriageability tests, which reduce
3184-448: A Yellow Sun , in which one of her characters begins by opening the refrigerator and sees oranges, beer, and a "roasted shimmering chicken". These contrast to later in the novel where one of her characters dies of starvation, and others are forced to eat powdered eggs and lizards. Adichie usually use real places and historic figures to draw readers into her stories. In developing characters, Adichie often exaggerates attitudes to contrast
3383-625: A bridge "to what became the avant-garde," the Impressionists and their successors. As noted by the museum, "a work by Renoir entered the Museum as early as 1907 (today the Museum has become one of the world's great repositories of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art)." The museum terms its nineteenth-century French paintings "second only to the museums of Paris," with strengths in "Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and others." The foundation of
3582-434: A central figure in postcolonial feminist literature , she is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) and Americanah (2013). Her other works include the book of essays We Should All Be Feminists (2014); Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017); a memoir, Notes on Grief (2021); and a children's book, Mama's Sleeping Scarf (2023). Adichie
3781-448: A collaboration with Chiuri, who invited her as an honoured guest to sit in the front-row of the company's spring runway show during the 2016 Paris Fashion Week . Scholar Matthew Lecznar stated that Adichie often challenges feminist stereotypes through references to fashion. He stated that allowing Dior to feature her text was a skillful way to use various media forms to not only deliver political messaging, but also to develop her image as
3980-603: A collection of poems, and moved to the United States to study communications at Drexel University in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania. In 1998, she wrote a play called For Love of Biafra . Her early works were written under the name Amanda N. Adichie. Two years after moving to the United States, Adichie transferred to Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic, Connecticut , where she lived with her sister Ijeoma, who
4179-481: A conservative magazine. Tempted to walk out of the interview, Adichie decided to continue because she wanted to discuss her views on how economic disenfranchisement had led to Trump's victory. The debate turned adversarial when Tyrrell said "I do not respond emotionally like this lady", and then declared that "Trump hasn't been a racist". Adichie countered his statements and gave an example citing Trump's statement that Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel could not be impartial in
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#17328726413104378-646: A courtyard in the Master of the Nets Garden in Suzhou . Maxwell K. Hearn has been the current department chairman of Asian Art since 2011. Though the majority of the Met's initial holdings of Egyptian art came from private collections, items uncovered during the museum's own archeological excavations, carried out between 1906 and 1941, constitute almost half of the current collection. More than 26,000 separate pieces of Egyptian art from
4577-467: A cultural bridge to bring people together globally. Although Adichie was raised as a Catholic, she considers her views, especially those on feminism, to sometimes conflict with her religion. As sectarian tensions in Nigeria arose between Christians and Muslims in 2012, she urged leaders to preach messages of peace and togetherness. Adichie stated that her relationship to Catholicism is complicated because she identifies culturally as Catholic, but feels that
4776-692: A feminist daughter. The book was published in 2017. In 2020, Adichie published "Zikora", a stand-alone short story about sexism and single motherhood, and an essay "Notes on Grief" in The New Yorker , after her father's death. She expanded the essay into a book of the same name , which was published by Fourth Estate the following year. In 2020, Adichie adapted We Should All Be Feminists for children, in an edition illustrated by Leire Salaberria. Translations of it were authorised for publication in Croatian, French, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. Adichie spent
4975-421: A fund for acquisitions led to the hiring of William M. Ivins Jr . in 1916. As the museum's first curator of prints, Ivans established the mission of collecting images that would reveal "the whole gamut of human life and endeavor, from the most ephemeral of courtesies to the loftiest pictorial presentation of man's spiritual aspirations." Over the next 30 years, he built what is credited as the best collection in
5174-529: A heightened awareness of being part of the African diaspora, and adoption of a dual perspective that reshapes and transforms her sense of self. Awareness of Blackness as part of identity, initially a foreign concept to Africans upon arriving in the United States, is shown not only in those works, but also in her feminist tract, Dear Ijeawele or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions . In it, she evaluates themes of identity that recur in Purple Hibiscus , Half of
5373-409: A light on how both sides of any conflict commit atrocities and neither side is blameless for the unfolding violence. Her narrative demonstrates that knowledge and understanding of diverse classes and ethnic groups is necessary to create harmonious multi-ethnic communities. Other forms of violence—including sexual abuse, rape, domestic abuse , and rage —are repeated themes in Purple Hibiscus , Half of
5572-474: A literary agent working at Pearson Morris and Belt Literary Management, accepted the manuscript. Although Morris recognised that marketing would be challenging, since Adichie was Black but neither African-American nor Caribbean. She submitted the manuscript to publishers until it was eventually accepted by Algonquin Books , a small independent company, in 2003. Algonquin published the manuscript and created support for
5771-461: A major in political science and a minor in communications in 2001. She later earned a master's degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University in 2003 and, for the next two years, was a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University , where she taught introductory fiction. She began studying at Yale University , and completed a second master's degree in African studies in 2008. Adichie received
5970-468: A medium to break down stereotypes, and was recognised with a Shorty Award in 2018 for her "Wear Nigerian Campaign". Adichie's 2009 TED Talk , "The Danger of a Single Story" is one of the most viewed TED Talks and her 2012 talk, "We Should All Be Feminists" was sampled by American singer Beyoncé as well as featured on a T-shirt by the French fashion house Dior in 2016. Adichie has received numerous academic awards, fellowships, and other honours, among them
6169-405: A military coup d'état , examines the cultural conflicts between Christianity and Igbo traditions , and touches on themes of class, gender, race, and violence. She sent her manuscript to publishing houses and literary agents, who either rejected it or requested that she change the setting from Africa to America to make it more familiar to a broader range of readers. Eventually, Djana Pearson Morris,
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6368-579: A mirror of cultural values and offers a glimpse into historical styles, emphasizing their evolution into today's own fashion world. On January 14, 2014, the Met named the Costume Institute complex after Anna Wintour . The curator is Andrew Bolton . Though other departments contain significant numbers of drawings and prints , the Drawings and Prints department specifically concentrates on North American pieces and Western European works produced after
6567-512: A multi-faceted intellectual, literary and fashionable "transmedia phenomenon". She became the face of No.7 , a makeup brand division of British drugstore retailer Boots . In her 2016 Facebook post Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions , Adichie argued that minimising femininity and its expression through fashion and makeup is "part of a culture of sexism". On 8 May 2017, Adichie announced her "Wear Nigerian" campaign on her Facebook page. The Nigerian government had launched
6766-513: A noble villa in Boscoreale , excavated after its entombment by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE . In 2007, the Met's Greek and Roman galleries were expanded to approximately 60,000 square feet (6,000 m ), allowing the majority of the collection to be on permanent display. The Met has a growing corpus of digital assets that expand access to the collection beyond the physical museum. The interactive Met map provides an initial view of
6965-415: A number of Fauve painters, including Matisse . Princeton University Press has documented the massive collection in a multi-volume book series published as The Robert Lehman Collection Catalogues . The Met's collection of medieval art consists of a comprehensive range of Western art from the 4th through the early 16th centuries, as well as Byzantine and pre-medieval European antiquities not included in
7164-606: A performance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that paired the Kronos Quartet with writers Tony Kushner , Marjane Satrapi and Rula Jebreal to explore the boundaries between music and literature. Festival-goers participated in a literary safari, trolling through the halls of Westbeth, a West Village artists community, where they experienced readings by a range of authors, including Elias Khoury , Giannina Braschi and Peter Schneider. A Processional Arts Workshop opened
7363-447: A poetry collection, in 1997, which she followed with a play, For Love of Biafra , in 1998. Her father's story during the war supplied material for her second novel Half of a Yellow Sun . Adichie's style juxtaposes Western and African influences, with particular influence from the Igbo culture. Most of her works, including her writing and speeches, explore the themes of religion, immigration, gender and culture. She also uses fashion as
7562-600: A postdoctoral fellow at the African Centre for Migration & Society at the University of the Witwatersrand stated that Adichie's fame led to her comments on trans women being elevated and the voices of other African women, both trans and cis, being silenced. According to Camminga, Adichie disregarded her own advice in "The Danger of a Single Story" by telling a "single story of trans existence". In 2009, Adichie delivered
7761-587: A priceless collection of ceremonial and personal objects from the Nigerian Court of Benin donated by Klaus Perls . The range of materials represented in the Africa, Oceania, and Americas collection is undoubtedly wide, in comparison to other departments at the Met. It includes everything from precious metals to porcupine quills. Curator of African Art Susan Mullin Vogel discussed a famous Benin artifact acquired by
7960-467: A professor of history, in an evaluation of scholarship in Nigeria, criticised the policy of elevating academic figures prematurely. He argued that scholarship, particularly in the humanities, should challenge policies and processes to strengthen the social contract between citizens and government. He suggested that the focus should shift from recognising scholars who merely influenced other scholars to acknowledging intellectuals who use their talents to benefit
8159-546: A recognised "public thinker" per journalist Lauren Alix Brown. Parts of Adichie's TEDx Talk were sampled in the song " Flawless " by singer Beyoncé on 13 December 2013. When asked in an NPR interview about that, Adichie responded that "anything that gets young people talking about feminism is a very good thing." She later refined the statement in an interview with the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant , saying that she liked and admired Beyoncé and gave permission to use her text because
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8358-597: A search engine. The Metropolitan Museum owns one of the world's largest collection of works of art of the Islamic world. The collection also includes artifacts and works of art of cultural and secular origin from the time period indicated by the rise of Islam predominantly from the Near East and in contrast to the Ancient Near Eastern collections. The biggest number of miniatures from the " Shahnameh " list prepared under
8557-426: A series of talks focusing on African affairs was being organised by her brother Chuks, who worked in the technology and information development department there, and she wanted to help him. In her presentation, "We Should All Be Feminists", Adichie stressed the importance of reclaiming the word "feminist" to combat the negative connotations previously associated with it. She said that feminism should be about exploring
8756-609: A specific style or period of art; rather, it is a reflection of Lehman's personal collecting interests. The Lehmans concentrated heavily on paintings of the Italian Renaissance , particularly the Sienese school. Sienese highlights include multiple major paintings by Ugolino da Siena, Simone Martini , Sano di Pietro , and Giovanni di Paolo , as well as a remarkable work by the Osservanza Master . Other choice Italian paintings in
8955-484: A storyteller, and her motives for addressing systemic inequalities to create a more inclusive world. Adichie has been the keynote speaker at numerous global conferences. In 2018, she spoke at the seventh annual International Igbo Conference, and encouraged the audience to preserve their culture and fight misconceptions and inaccuracies about Igbo heritage. She revealed in her presentation " Igbo bu Igbo " ("Igbo Is Igbo") that she only speaks to her daughter in Igbo, which
9154-728: A total of 1.5 million works. The collection is divided into 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue , along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park on Manhattan 's Upper East Side , is by area one of the world's largest art museums . The first portion of the approximately 2-million-square-foot (190,000 m ) building was built in 1880. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan , contains an extensive collection of art , architecture , and artifacts from medieval Europe . The Metropolitan Museum of Art
9353-542: A way to marry idealism and pragmatism because there are complicated shades of grey everywhere". Adichie co-curated the 2015 Pen World Voices Festival in New York City, along with Laszlo Jakab Orsos. i The festival theme was contemporary literature of Africa and its diaspora. She closed the conference with her Arthur Miller Freedom to Write lecture, which focused on censorship and using one's voice to speak out against injustices. In addressing her audience, she pointed out cultural differences between Nigeria and America, such as
9552-459: A welcome, authentic voice to this most universal of emotions, which is also one of the most universally avoided." She has been widely recognised as "the literary daughter of Chinua Achebe." Jane Shilling of the Daily Telegraph called her "one who makes storytelling seem as easy as birdsong". Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art , colloquially referred to as
9751-659: A woman', and walks into the women's bathroom, and a woman goes, 'You're not supposed to be here', and she's transphobic?" The interview, according to the LGBT magazine PinkNews shows that Adichie "remains insensitive to the nuances or sensitivities of the ongoing fight for trans rights" and thus, criticised her for perpetuating "harmful rhetoric about trans people". Cheryl Stobie of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg , South Africa, said that Adichie supported an "exclusionary conceptualisation of gender". B. Camminga,
9950-411: A woman's worth to that of a prize, seeing only her value as a man's wife. Her women characters repeatedly resist being defined by stereotypes and embody a quest for women's empowerment. Adichie's works often deal with inter-generational explorations of family units, allowing her to examine differing experiences of oppression and liberation. In both Purple Hibiscus and "The Headstrong Historian"—one of
10149-592: A year and a half writing her first children's book, Mama's Sleeping Scarf , which was published in 2023 by HarperCollins under the pseudonym "Nwa Grace James". Joelle Avelino, a Congolese-Angolan artist, illustrated the book. The book tells the story of the connections between generations through family interactions with a head scarf. Adichie uses both Igbo and English in her works, with Igbo phrases shown in italics and followed by an English translation. She uses figures of speech, especially metaphors, to trigger sensory experiences. For example, in Purple Hibiscus ,
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#173287264131010348-550: Is "regarded as one of the most vital and original novelists of her generation". Her works have been translated into more than 30 languages. Obi-Young Otosirieze pointed out in his cover story about Adichie for the Nigerian magazine Open Country Mag in September 2021, that "her novels ... broke down a wall in publishing. Purple Hibiscus proved that there was an international market for African realist fiction post-Achebe [and] Half of
10547-448: Is a device to represent negative traits or behaviours. Adichie draws on figures from Igbo oral tradition to present facts in the style of historical fiction . She breaks with tradition in a way that contrasts with traditional African literature, given that women writers were often absent from the Nigerian literary canon , and female characters were often overlooked or served as supporting material for male characters who were engaged in
10746-474: Is considerably relevant and stated that she was a major voice in the Third Generation of Nigerian writers , while Izuu Nwankwọ called her invented Igbo naming scheme as an "artform", which she has perfected in her works. He lauded her ability to insert Igbo language and meaning into an English-language text without disrupting the flow or distorting the storyline. In the judgement of Ernest Emenyonu , one of
10945-729: Is demonstrated by characters changing their names, a common theme in Adiche's short fiction, which serves to point out hypocrisy. By using the theme of immigration, she is able to develop dialogue on how her characters' perceptions and identity are changed by living abroad and encountering different cultural norms. Initially alienated by the customs and traditions of a new place, the characters, such as Ifemelu in Americanah , eventually discover ways to connect with new communities. Ifemelu's connections are made through self-exploration, which, rather than leading to assimilating into her new culture, lead her to
11144-489: Is home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments , costumes , and decorative arts and textiles , as well as antique weapons and armor from around the world. Several notable interiors, ranging from 1st-century Rome through modern American design, are installed in its galleries. The Met's permanent collection is curated by seventeen separate departments, each with a specialized staff of curators and scholars, as well as six dedicated conservation departments and
11343-559: Is known for hosting the annual Met Gala and in the past has presented summer exhibitions such as Savage Beauty and China: Through the Looking Glass . In past years, Costume Institute shows organized around designers such as Cristóbal Balenciaga , Chanel , Yves Saint Laurent , and Gianni Versace ; and style doyenne like Diana Vreeland , Mona von Bismarck , Babe Paley , Jayne Wrightsman , Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis , Nan Kempner , and Iris Apfel have drawn significant crowds to
11542-458: Is one of the museum's most popular collections. Several early trustees of the museum were armor enthusiasts. The 1904 purchase of the collection of Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, duc de Dino, served as the foundational collection. It became a great collection with the gift and bequest of the Henry Riggs collection of 2,000 pieces, which was one of the finest assembled by a single person. It came to
11741-626: Is strongest in late medieval European pieces and Japanese pieces from the 5th through 19th centuries. However, these are not the only cultures represented in Arms and Armor; the collection spans more geographic regions than almost any other department, including weapons and armor from dynastic Egypt , ancient Greece , the Roman Empire , the ancient Near East , Africa, Oceania , and the Americas , as well as American firearms (especially Colt firearms) from
11940-556: Is typically at the forefront of her works, which celebrate Igbo language and culture , and African patriotism, in general. Her writing is an intentional dialogue with the West, intent on reclaiming African dignity and humanity. A recurring theme in Adichie's works is the Biafran War. The civil war was a "defining moment" in the post-colonial history of Nigeria, and examining the conflict dramatises
12139-408: The Americas and is housed in the 40,000-square-foot (4,000 m ) Rockefeller Wing on the south end of the museum. The Wing exhibits Non-Western works of art created from 3,000 BCE – present, including a wide range of particular cultural traditions. Significantly, this work was regarded as art, judged on aesthetic terms, in a Western art museum. Before then, objects from Africa, Oceania, and
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#173287264131012338-638: The Egyptian Museum in Cairo ), discovered in a tomb in the Southern Asasif in western Thebes in 1920. These models depict, in unparalleled detail, a cross-section of Egyptian life in the early Middle Kingdom : boats, gardens, and scenes of daily life are represented in miniature . William the Faience Hippopotamus is a miniature that has become the informal mascot of the museum. Other notable items in
12537-521: The H.O. Havemeyer Collection in 1929. Ivans also purchased five albums from the auction of the Earl of Pembroke's collection, and the 2,200 prints in these albums provided a nucleus of Italian prints. Meanwhile, acquisitions of drawings, including an album of 50 Goyas (thanks to Ivans, the Met collected almost 300 works by Goya on paper) continued to be processed through the Department of Paintings. In 1960,
12736-576: The Lower Paleolithic period (between 300,000 and 75,000 BCE), are part of the Egyptian collection. The first curator was Albert Lythgoe , who directed several Egyptian excavations for the museum. Since 2013 the curator has been Diana Craig Patch. In 2018, the museum built an exhibition around the golden-sheathed 1st-century BCE coffin of Nedjemankh , a high-ranking priest of the ram-headed god Heryshaf of Heracleopolis . Investigators determined that
12935-570: The Middle Ages . The first gift of Old Master drawings, comprising 670 sheets, was presented as a single group in 1880 by Cornelius Vanderbilt II , though most proved to be misattributed. The Vanderbilt gift launched the collection, and the Department of Paintings also eventually acquired drawings (including by Michelangelo and Leonardo ). In the meantime, the Met library began to collect prints. Harris Brisbane Dick's donation of thirty-five hundred works on paper (mostly nineteenth-century etchings) and
13134-527: The Paleolithic era through the Ptolemaic era constitute the Met's Egyptian collection, and almost all of them are on display in the museum's massive wing of 40 Egyptian galleries. Among the rarest pieces in the Met's Egyptian collection are 13 wooden models (of the total 24 models found together, 12 models and 1 offering bearer figure is at the Met, while the remaining 10 models and 1 offering bearer figure are in
13333-504: The Spanish painters El Greco and Goya , and the Dutch masters Rembrandt , Ter Borch , and de Hooch. Lehman's collection of 700 drawings by the Old Masters , featuring works by Rembrandt and Dürer , is particularly valuable for its breadth and quality. The collection also has French 18th and 19th century drawings, as well as nearly two-hundred 18th century Venetian drawings, mostly by
13532-676: The Sumerian , Hittite , Sasanian, Assyrian , Babylonian , and Elamite cultures (among others), as well as an extensive collection of unique Bronze Age objects. The highlights of the collection include the Sumerian Stele of Ushumgal , the Elamite silver Kneeling Bull with Vessel , the Pratt Ivories , and a set of monumental stone lamassu , or guardian figures, from the Northwest Palace of
13731-587: The code of silence , which, in the United States, often acts as censorship . She stated that molding a story to fit an existing narrative, such as characterising the Boko Haram 's kidnapping of schoolgirls as equal to the Taliban's treatment of women , is a form of censorship which hides the truth that Boko Haram opposes western-style education for anyone. Although she did not speak of her father's recent kidnapping and release, writer Nicole Lee of The Guardian said that
13930-405: The intersections of oppression, such as how class, race, gender and sexuality influence equal opportunities and human rights, causing global gender gaps in education, pay and power. In 2015, Adichie returned to the theme of feminism at the commencement address for Wellesley College and reminded students that they should not allow their ideologies to exclude other ideas and should "minister to
14129-561: The trans-Atlantic slave trade in school and had no understanding of the racism associated with being Black in the United States or class structures in the United Kingdom. It explores the central message of a "shared Black consciousness", as both of the characters, one in Britain and the other in America, experiences a loss of their identity when they try to navigate their lives abroad. Adichie
14328-527: The "Robert Lehman Wing", on the ground floor and the basement level, the museum refers to the collection as "one of the most extraordinary private art collections ever assembled in the United States". To emphasize the personal nature of the Robert Lehman Collection, the Met housed the collection in a special set of galleries, some of which evoked the interior of Lehman's richly decorated townhouse at 7 West 54th Street . This intentional separation of
14527-604: The 15th through the early 20th centuries. Although the collection is particularly concentrated in Renaissance sculpture—much of which can be seen in situ surrounded by contemporary furnishings and decoration—it also contains comprehensive holdings of furniture, jewelry, glass and ceramic pieces , tapestries, textiles, and timepieces and mathematical instruments . In addition to its outstanding collections of English and French furniture, visitors can enter dozens of completely furnished period rooms, transplanted in their entirety into
14726-438: The 19th and 20th centuries. Among the collection's 14,000 objects are the oldest items in the museum: flint bifaces which date to 700,000–200,000 BCE. There are also many pieces made for and used by kings and princes, including armor belonging to Henry VIII of England , Henry II of France , and Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor . A. Hyatt Mayor called the Met's collection "the only single collection from which one might illustrate
14925-432: The 2006 festival, Bill Moyers hosted a television series on PBS entitled "Faith & Reason," which featured participants from the festival. PEN America offers audio downloads and photos from select events on its website. In late 2006, Caro Llewellyn was recruited from Australia to be the festival director and organized the third through seventh Festivals with founder Salman Rushdie . This period saw great growth in
15124-608: The 2018 PEN World Voices Festival, Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture at Cooper Union in Manhattan. Although the speech was centered on feminism and censorship, Adichie's questioning of why Clinton's Twitter profile began with "wife" instead of her own accomplishments became the focus of media attention, prompting Clinton to change her Twitter bio. Later that year, she spoke at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany about breaking
15323-545: The 5 July edition of the Vatican's newspaper L'Osservatore Romano . In her article, " Sognare come un'unica umanitàs " ("Dreaming as a Single Humanity"), Adichie recalled being berated at her mother's funeral for having criticised the church's focus on money, but she also acknowledged that Catholic rituals gave her solace during her mourning. She stated that Pope Francis' call in Fratelli tutti for recognition of everyone as part of
15522-574: The Americas in their permanent collection. The arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas opened to the public in 1982, under the title, "The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing". This wing is named after Nelson Rockefeller's son, Michael Rockefeller , who died while collecting works in New Guinea . Today, the Met's collection contains more than 11,000 pieces from sub-Saharan Africa , the Pacific Islands , and
15721-461: The Americas were often considered to be the work of "primitives" or ethnographic work, rather than art. The Wing exhibits the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas in an exhibition separated by geographical locations. The collection ranges from 40,000-year-old indigenous Australian rock paintings , to a group of 15-foot-tall (4.6 m) memorial poles carved by the Asmat people of New Guinea , to
15920-563: The Ancient Greek and Roman collection. Like the Islamic collection, the Medieval collection contains a broad range of two- and three-dimensional art, with religious objects heavily represented. In total, the Medieval Art department's permanent collection numbers over 10,000 separate objects, divided between the main museum building on Fifth Avenue and The Cloisters . The medieval collection in
16119-454: The Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II . Though the Met first acquired a group of Peruvian antiquities in 1882, in addition to Mesoamerican antiquities, the museum did not begin a concerted effort to collect works from Africa , Oceania , and the Americas until 1969, when American businessman, philanthropist and then NY Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller donated his more than 3,000-piece collection to
16318-465: The Beatles ; Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed, in 2001, which exposes the transforming ideas of physical beauty over time and the bodily contortion necessary to accommodate such ideals and fashion; The Chanel Exhibit, displayed in 2005, acknowledging the skilled work of designer Coco Chanel as one of the leading fashion names in history; Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy, exhibited in 2008, suggesting
16517-491: The Biafran conflict, weaving together a love story that includes people from various regions and social classes of Nigeria, and how the war and encounters with refugees changes them. While completing her Hodder and MacArthur fellowships, Adichie published short stories in various magazines. Twelve of these stories were collected into her third book, The Thing Around Your Neck , published by Knopf in 2009. The stories focuses on
16716-631: The British newspaper, The Guardian , calling the essay "perfectly reasonable". That interview sparked a Twitter backlash from critics of her opinion, which included a former graduate of one of Adichie's writing workshops , Akwaeke Emezi . In response, Adichie penned "It Is Obscene: A True Reflection in Three Parts" and posted it on her website in June 2021, criticising the use of social media to air out grievances. The following month, students who were members of
16915-510: The Catholic faith and spurred her decision to raise her child as Catholic. By 2021, Adichie stated that she was a nominal Catholic and only attended mass when she could find a progressive community focused on uplifting humanity. She clarified that "I think of myself as agnostic and questioning". That year, her reflections on Pope Francis's encyclical Fratelli tutti were published in Italian in
17114-516: The Collection as a "museum within the museum" met with mixed criticism and approval at the time, though the acquisition of the collection was seen as a coup for the Met. Some have argued that it would be educationally more beneficial to have works from given schools of painting in the same section of the museum. Unlike other departments at the Met, the Robert Lehman collection does not concentrate on
17313-468: The Drawing and Prints collection, sometimes in great concentrations. Prints are also represented in multiple states. Many artists and makers whose work is in the prints and drawings collection are otherwise not represented in the museum's holdings. On the death of banker Robert Lehman in 1969, his Foundation donated 2,600 works of art to the museum, which had been collected by Robert and his father. Housed in
17512-840: The Egyptian collection include the Chair of Reniseneb , the Lotiform Chalice , and the Metternich Stela . However, the popular centerpiece of the Egyptian Art department continues to be the Temple of Dendur . Dismantled by the Egyptian government as part of the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia to save it from rising waters caused by the building of the Aswan High Dam ,
17711-777: The Festival's attendance and reach with guests including Nobel prize-winners such as Nadine Gordimer , Orhan Pamuk , Toni Morrison , and Mario Vargas Llosa , who appeared on stage with Umberto Eco and Salman Rushdie for an event at the 92Y called The Three Musketeers. During this period, the popular Translation Slam was introduced. The PEN Cabaret increased its cache with guests such as Patti Smith , Saul Williams , Bill T Jones , Natalie Merchant , and Sam Shepard . The Festival also extended its reach during this time with satellite events in Chicago, Portland, Albany, Pittsburgh, Miami, L.A., and other cities. An extensive program of year-round events
17910-535: The LGBT community at the University of Cape Town , South Africa, boycotted her public lecture on their campus. Adichie admitted in an interview with Otosirieze Obi-Young in September that she was "deeply hurt" by the backlash and began a period of self-reflection on her biases, informed by reading anything she could find to help her understand trans issues. In late 2022, she faced further criticism for her views after another interview with The Guardian when she said, "So somebody who looks like my brother—he says, 'I'm
18109-530: The Met (much of it a joint gift to the Morgan Library). The Met easily has the best collection of this material in the nation, and one of the three or four best in the world. Thus the Met's collection, hitherto top-heavy with famous French artists, "became uniquely diverse," with "many little-known artists from France, as well as numerous artists from other European nations;" many of which are not otherwise represented in U.S. museums. The plein-air collection forms
18308-458: The Met , is an encyclopedic art museum in New York City . By floor area, it is the fourth-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas . With 5.36 million visitors in 2023, it is the most-visited museum in the United States and the fifth-most visited art museum in the world . In 2000, its permanent collection had over two million works; it currently lists
18507-415: The Met in 1991, annually loaned it to the Met for half a year at a time. Walter Annenberg described his choice of gifting his collection to the Met as an example of "strength going to strength." The two collections are highly complementary: "The Annenberg collection serves as a second, complementary core collection of blue chip Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. Most importantly, it strengthened
18706-673: The Met's galleries. The collection even includes an entire 16th-century patio from the Spanish castle of Vélez Blanco , reconstructed in a two-story gallery, and the intarsia studiolo from the ducal palace at Gubbio . Sculptural highlights of the sprawling department include Bernini 's Bacchanal , a cast of Rodin's The Burghers of Calais , and several unique pieces by Houdon , including his Bust of Voltaire and his famous portrait of his daughter Sabine. The museum's collection of American art returned to view in new galleries on January 16, 2012. The new installation provides visitors with
18905-454: The Met's relatively sparse holdings of Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec, it added needed late works by Cézanne and Monet as well as a rare Seurat, and it brought a very impressive group of Van Goghs to a collection already rich in works by the Dutchman." The European Sculpture and Decorative Arts collection is one of the largest departments at the Met, holding in excess of 50,000 separate pieces from
19104-728: The Met, the Islamic Art galleries contain many interior pieces, including the entire reconstructed Nur Al-Din Room from an early 18th-century house in Damascus . In September 2022 the Met revealed that it had received a substantial gift from Qatar Museums on the occasion of its 10th anniversary of the opening of its Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia, which would benefit its Department of Islamic Art and some of
19303-520: The Met. Museum?, 1987, Julie Torres' Super Diva!, 2020 (a posthumous image of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg), and Ben Blount's Black Women's Wisdom, 2019. Currently, the Drawings and Prints collection contains about 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books made in Europe and the Americas. Many of the great masters of European painting, who produced many more sketches and drawings than actual paintings, are represented in
19502-453: The Met. The Costume Institute's annual Benefit Gala , co-chaired by Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour , is an extremely popular, if exclusive, event in the fashion world; in 2007, the 700 available tickets started at $ 6,500 (~$ 9,204 in 2023) per person. Exhibits displayed over the past decade in the Costume Institute include: Rock Style, in 1999, representing the style of more than 40 rock musicians, including Madonna , David Bowie , and
19701-564: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1972. It was originally auctioned in April 1900 by a lieutenant named Augustus Pitt Rivers at the price of 37 guineas . In December 2021, the Met began its $ 70 million (~$ 77.7 million in 2023) renovation of The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing's African, ancient American, and Oceanic art galleries, originally planned to begin in 2020 but now set for completion in 2024. The 40,000 square-feet renovation includes
19900-468: The Museum since 1942," one that is "outstanding for the exceptional rarity and quality of the objects, their illustrious origins, and their typological variety." Lauder, who noted that he had begun collecting with the assistance of curator Grancsay almost 55 years earlier, also donated money for the study and presentation of arms and armor. The 11 galleries were named in Lauder's honor. The Museum of Costume Art
20099-752: The PEN America literary journal also published selections from the 2005 programs. The second World Voices Festival was held in New York City from April 26 to April 30, 2006. The Festival theme was Faith & Reason . The Festival featured 137 writers from 41 countries in 57 programs. International participants included: Martin Amis , Margaret Atwood , Gioconda Belli , Hans Magnus Enzensberger , David Grossman , Ayaan Hirsi Ali , Etgar Keret , Elias Khoury , Henning Mankell , Adam Michnik , Orhan Pamuk , Anne Provoost , Zadie Smith , Dương Thu Hương , Colm Tóibín , Ko Un , and Jeanette Winterson . Immediately following
20298-652: The Tiepolos, Guardi, and some other artists remain in the collection. Major gifts from Henry Gurdon Marquand in 1889, 1890 and 1891 gave the Met a much more solid foundation. Additionally, his example helped to create a taste for collecting Old Master paintings. In 1913, the Benjamin Altman bequest had sufficient range and depth to put the Met's collection of paintings on the map. In 1949, the Jules Bache gift added more great paintings. The Robert Lehman Collection, which came to
20497-504: The Tiepolos. The collection of bronzes, furniture, Renaissance majolica , Venetian glass , enamels, jewelry, textiles, and frames is outstanding. The Lehman collection of Italian majolica is regarded as the best in the country. Robert Lehman also collected many nineteenth and twentieth century paintings. These include works by Ingres , Corot , the Barbizon School , Monet , Renoir , Cezanne , Gauguin , Van Gogh , Seurat , and
20696-552: The University of Nigeria while her mother worked for the government in Enugu until 1973 when she became an administration officer at the University of Nigeria, and later the first female registrar . Adichie stayed at the University of Nigeria campus in the house previously occupied by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe . Her siblings include Ijeoma Rosemary, Uchenna "Uche", Chukwunweike "Chuks", Okechukwu "Okey" and Kenechukwu "Kene". Adichie
20895-482: The University of Nigeria Campus Secondary School, with top distinction in the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), and numerous academic prizes. She was admitted to the University of Nigeria, where she studied medicine and pharmacy for a year and half, and served as the editor of The Compass , a student-run magazine in the university. In 1997, at the age of 19, Adichie published Decisions ,
21094-548: The Wrightsmans had the Met's curators at their disposal, for whom they served as a virtual "auxiliary purchase fund for objects the Met curators coveted, but could not afford." The Met's plein air painting collection, which it calls "unrivaled", was the last large section of the European Paintings collection to have a home at the museum. The sale of a Monet and the construction of small scale galleries ultimately resulted in
21293-409: The acquisition of 220 European paintings (most of them plein-air sketches) from two collections. The Monet was used to purchase a half share of Wheelock "Lock" Whitney III's collection in 2003 (the remainder came as a promised gift), and when Eugene V. Thaw (1927–2018) saw how good they looked in the Met's new, purpose built galleries, he and his wife Clare donated their substantially larger collection to
21492-507: The age" allowed her to use her celebrity "to demonstrate the power of dress and empower people from diverse contexts to embrace [fashion] ... which has everything to do with the politics of identity". Academics Floriana Bernardi and Enrica Picarelli credited her support of the Nigerian fashion industry with helping put Nigeria "at the forefront" of the movement to use fashion as a globally-recognised political mechanism of empowerment. Toyin Falola ,
21691-545: The apology, Adichie attempted to clarify her statement, by stressing that girls are socialised in ways that damage their self-worth, which has a lasting impact throughout their lives, whereas boys benefit from the advantages of male privilege, before transitioning. Some accepted her apology, and others rejected it as a trans-exclusionary radical feminist view that biological sex determines gender. The controversy emerged again in 2020 when Adichie voiced support for J. K. Rowling 's article on gender and sex, in an interview in
21890-486: The arrival of a king to challenge colonial and religious leaders symbolises Palm Sunday , and the usage of language referencing Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart invokes the memories of his work to her readers. Similarly, the name of Kambili, a character in Purple Hibiscus , evokes " i biri ka m biri " ("Live and Let Live"), the title of a song by Igbo musician Oliver De Coque . To describe pre- and post-war conditions, she moves from good to worse as seen in Half of
22089-540: The artifact had been stolen in 2011 from Egypt, and the museum returned it. In 2012 the Met's collection of European paintings numbered "more than 2,500 works of art from the thirteenth through the early twentieth century." As of December 2021, it had 2,625. These paintings are housed in the Old Masters galleries (newly installed in 2023), the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century galleries reinstalled in 2007 (both on
22288-452: The arts of Burma (Myanmar), and Thailand . Three ancient religions of India— Hinduism , Buddhism and Jainism —are well represented in these sculptures. However, not only "art" and ritual objects are represented in the collection; many of the best-known pieces are functional objects. The Asian wing also contains the Astor Court , a complete Ming Dynasty -style garden court , modeled on
22487-429: The attention that a person pays to their fashion and style correlates to the amount of prestige and respectability they will be given by society. She began to recognise that people were judged for the way that they dressed. In particular, women writers wrote disparagingly about or trivialised attention to fashion, depicting woman who enjoyed fashion and makeup as silly, shallow or vain and without any depth. Acknowledging
22686-469: The body of the work to evoke the illusion of writing. Islamic Arts galleries had been undergoing refurbishment since 2001 and reopened on November 1, 2011, as the New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia. Until that time, a narrow selection of items from the collection had been on temporary display throughout the museum. As with many other departments at
22885-596: The book by providing advance copies to booksellers, reviewers, and media houses, and sponsoring Adichie on a promotional tour. They also sent the manuscript to Fourth Estate , who accepted the book for publication in the United Kingdom in 2004. During that period, Adichie hired an agent, Sarah Chalfant of the Wylie Agency , to represent her. Purple Hibiscus was later published by Kachifo Limited in Nigeria in 2004, and subsequently translated into more than 40 languages. After her first book, Adichie began writing Half of
23084-488: The case Low v. Trump University because of his Mexican heritage. After the debate, she wrote on her Facebook that she felt ambushed by the BBC and that they had "sneakily [pitted her] against a Trump supporter" to create adversarial entertainment. In response, the BBC issued an apology for not informing her of the nature of the interview, but claimed they had designed the program to offer a balanced perspective. Adichie delivered
23283-475: The character Auntie Ifeoma embodies a womanist view through making all family members to work as a team and with consensus, so that each person's talents are utilised to their highest potential. In both her written works and public speaking, Adichie incorporates humour, and uses anecdotes , irony and satire to underscore a particular point of view. Adichie has increasingly developed a contemporary Pan-Africanist view of gender issues, becoming less interested in
23482-457: The church's focus on money and guilt do not align with her values. In a 2017 event at Georgetown University , she stated that differences in ideology between Catholic and Church Missionary Society leaders caused divisions in Nigerian society during her childhood, and she left the church around the time of the inauguration of Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. She acknowledged that the birth of her daughter and election of Pope Francis drew her back to
23681-631: The city, and she encouraged Black women to work with men to change the violent culture and celebrate their African roots. Her keynote address at the 2020 Congreso Futuro [ es ] (Future Conference) in Santiago, Chile, focused on the importance of listening. She said that, to become an effective advocate, a person must understand a wide variety of perspectives. She stressed that people become better problem solvers if they learn to listen to people with whom they may not agree, because other points of view help everyone recognise their common humanity. She
23880-479: The collection as it can be experienced in the physical museum. The Greek and Roman Art department page provides a department overview and links to collection highlights and digital assets. The Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History provides a one thousand year overview of Greek art from 1000 BCE to 1 CE . More than 33,000 Greek and Roman objects can be referenced in the Met Digital Collection via
24079-452: The collection include masterpieces like Botticelli 's Annunciation , a pair of stunning portraits by Jacometto Veneziano , and a stellar Madonna and Child by Giovanni Bellini . The Northern school of painting is represented by Petrus Christus , Hans Memling , the Master of Moulins ( Jean Hey ), Hans Holbein , and Lucas Cranach and his studio. Dutch and Spanish Baroque highlights include
24278-463: The collection, and he even purchased important works from Clarence H. Mackay (the greatest contemporary private collector of this material, who was wiped out by the Great Depression). Grancsay later resold some of these important works to the museum at cost. The department's focus on "outstanding craftsmanship and decoration," including pieces intended solely for display, means that the collection
24477-511: The collection. Calligraphy both religious and secular is well represented in the Islamic Art department, from the official decrees of Suleiman the Magnificent to a number of Quran manuscripts reflecting different periods and styles of calligraphy. Modern calligraphic artists also used a word or phrase to convey a direct message, or they created compositions from the shapes of Arabic words. Others incorporated indecipherable cursive writing within
24676-454: The colonial accounts of history and develops the means to contest its distortions through indigenous knowledge , by recognising that colonial literature tells only part of the story and minimises African contributions. Adichie illustrates this in Half of a Yellow Sun , when mathematics instructor Odenigbo , explains to his houseboy, Ugwu , that he will learn in school that the Niger River
24875-513: The complex and polarizing issues in the US; another, Next Generation Now, aimed to nurture young people as agents of change. Festival participants included celebrated figures such as Laurie Anderson , Paul Auster , Hillary Rodham Clinton , Jelani Cobb , Jennifer Egan , Dave Eggers , Roxane Gay , Xiaolu Guo , Siri Hustvedt , Ryszard Krynicki , Jhumpa Lahiri , Salman Rushdie , Dag Solstad , Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o , Colm Tóibín , Colson Whitehead , and many others. The concluding lecture
25074-494: The crowd was aware of her personal ordeal, which made her speech "all the more poignant". In 2016, Adichie was invited to speak about her thoughts on Donald Trump 's election to the US Presidency for the BBC's program Newsnight . When she arrived at the studio, she was informed that the format would be a debate between her and R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. , a Trump supporter and the editor-in-chief of The American Spectator ,
25273-571: The cycles which silence women's voices. She stated that studies had shown that women read literature created by men and women, but men primarily read works by other men. She urged men to begin to read women writers' works to gain an understanding and be able to acknowledge women's struggles in society. In 2019, as part of the Chancellor's Lecture Series, she gave the speech "Writer, Thinker, Feminist: Vignettes from Life" at Vanderbilt University 's Langford Auditorium. The speech focused on her development as
25472-461: The department include: Junius Spencer Morgan II , who presented a broad range of material, mainly 16th century, including woodblocks and many prints by Albrecht Dürer in 1919; Gothic woodcuts and Rembrandt etchings from the Felix M. Warburg family; James Clark McGuire's transformative bequest brought over seven hundred fifteenth-century woodcuts; prints by Rembrandt, Edgar Degas , and Mary Cassatt with
25671-450: The differences between traditional and western cultures. Her stories often point out failed cultures, particularly those which leave her characters in a limbo between bad options. At times, she creates a character as an oversimplified archetype of a particular aspect of cultural behavior to create a foil for a more complex character. Adichie gives her characters recognisable common names for an intended ethnicity, such as Mohammed for
25870-541: The encroachments on rights, liberties, and values. More than 200 writers, poets, artists, and thinkers representing 50 nationalities gathered in New York City for over 90 conversations, readings, debates, and discussions celebrating the best of the year’s literature and covering many different kinds of resistances—the internal and the external, the political and the personal—in different cultures, identities, and communities. The festival featured new streams of programming: one, American Voices, focused on American writers addressing
26069-445: The experiences of Nigerian women, living at home or abroad, examining the tragedies, loneliness, and feelings of displacement resulting from their marriages, relocations, or violent events. The Thing Around Your Neck was a bridge between Africa and the African diaspora , which was also the theme of her fourth book, Americanah , published in 2013. It was the story of a young Nigerian woman and her male schoolmate, who had not studied
26268-529: The failure of contraception and an unexpected pregnancy, abandonment by her partner, single motherhood, social pressure and Zikora's identity crisis, and the various emotions she experiences about becoming a mother. Adichie's works show a deep interest in the complexities of the human condition. Recurrent themes are forgiveness and betrayal, as in Half of a Yellow Sun , when Olanna forgives her lover's infidelity, or Ifemelu's decision to separate from her boyfriend in Americanah . Adichie's examination of war shines
26467-595: The festival with a procession of giant bibliomorphic puppets, illuminated objects, and projections on the High Line at sundown. Organized by festival curatorial chair Rob Spillman, the PEN World Voices Festival 2017 focused on vital issues of the political period, with a special focus on the restive relationship between gender and power. Taking place in New York City May 1–7, 2017, the weeklong festival used
26666-488: The former artistic director of Sydney Writers Festival, to take the position of Senior Director of Literary Programs and Director of World Voices Festival. The 2018 Festival featured an unprecedented breadth of literary and cultural luminaries under the banner of “Resist and Reimagine.” The theme captured the political division and discord apparent in the US and around the world, as well as the hope, energy, and activism shown by people coming together in powerful new ways to resist
26865-459: The history of American art from the 18th through the early 20th century. The new galleries encompasses 30,000 square feet (2,800 m ) for the display of the museum's collection. The curator in charge of the American Wing since September 2014 is Sylvia Yount. In July 2018, Art of Native America opened in the American Wing. This marked the first appearance of Indigenous American art in
27064-467: The human family and for their responsibility to care for each other allowed her to re-imagine what the church might be. Adichie is an activist and supporter of LGBT rights in Africa and has been vocal in her support for LGBT rights in Nigeria . She has questioned whether consensual homosexual conduct between adults rises to the standard of a crime, as crime requires a victim and harm to society. When Nigeria passed an anti-homosexuality bill in 2014, she
27263-682: The intersections of class, culture, gender, (post-)imperialism, power, race and religion. Struggle is a predominant theme throughout African literature, and her works follow that tradition by examining families, communities, and relationships. Her explorations go beyond political strife and the struggle for rights, and typically examine what it is to be human. Many of her writings deal with the way her characters reconcile themselves with trauma in their lives and how they move from being silenced and voiceless to self-empowered and able to tell their own stories. Adichie's works, beginning with Purple Hibiscus , generally examine cultural identity. Igbo identity
27462-487: The issues that sparked it. The University of Nigeria, Nsukka reappears in Adichie's novels to illustrate the transformative nature of education in developing political consciousness, and symbolises the stimulation of Pan-African consciousness and a desire for independence in Half of a Yellow Sun . It appeared in both Purple Hibisus and Americanah as the site of resistance to authoritarian rule through civil disobedience and dissent by students. The university teaches
27661-472: The large sandstone temple was given to the United States in 1965 and assembled in a new wing at the Met in 1978. Situated in a large room and partially surrounded by a reflecting pool and illuminated by a wall of windows opening onto Central Park, the Temple of Dendur has been one of the Met's most enduring attractions. Among the oldest items at the Met, a set of Archeulian flints from Deir el-Bahri which date from
27860-529: The late 19th century, the Met started acquiring ancient art and artifacts from the Near East . From a few cuneiform tablets and seals , the museum's collection of Near Eastern art has grown to more than 7,000 pieces. Representing a history of the region beginning in the Neolithic Period and encompassing the fall of the Sasanian Empire and the end of Late Antiquity , the collection includes works from
28059-729: The lens of literature and the arts to confront new challenges to free expression and human rights—issues that have been core to PEN America’s mission since its founding. During a historic moment of both unprecedented attacks on core freedoms and the emergence of new forms of resistance, the festival offered a platform for a global community of writers, artists, and thinkers to connect with a concerned public to fight back against bigotry, hatred, and isolationism. The event featured Samantha Bee , Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie , Carrie Brownstein , Teju Cole , Masha Gessen , Cecile Richards , Patti Smith , Gabourey Sidibe , Andrew Solomon , Saeed Jones , and many more. In 2017, PEN America recruited Chip Rolley,
28258-562: The main Metropolitan building, centered on the first-floor medieval gallery, contains about 6,000 separate objects. While a great deal of European medieval art is on display in these galleries, most of the European pieces are concentrated at the Cloisters (see below). However, this allows the main galleries to display much of the Met's Byzantine art side by side with European pieces. The main gallery
28457-625: The message drawn from the talk in her subsequent speeches, including her address at the Hilton Humanitarian Symposium of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation in 2019. On 15 March 2012, Adichie became the youngest person to deliver a Commonwealth Lecture . The presentation was given at the Guildhall in London addressing the theme "Connecting Cultures". Adichie said, "Realistic fiction is not merely
28656-539: The metaphorical vision of superheroes as ultimate fashion icons; the 2010 exhibit on the American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity, which exposes the revolutionary styles of the American woman from the years 1890 to 1940, and how such styles reflect the political and social sentiments of the time. The theme of the 2011 event was "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty ". Each of these exhibits explores fashion as
28855-576: The monumental Amathus sarcophagus and a magnificently detailed Etruscan chariot known as the " Monteleone chariot ". The collection also contains many pieces from far earlier than the Greek or Roman empires—among the most remarkable are a collection of early Cycladic sculptures from the mid-third millennium BCE, many so abstract as to seem almost modern. The Greek and Roman galleries also contain several large classical wall paintings and reliefs from different periods, including an entire reconstructed bedroom from
29054-508: The most prominent scholars of Igbo literature , Adichie was "the leading and most engaging voice of her era" and he has described her as "Africa's preeminent storyteller". Toyin Falola , a professor of history, hailed her along other writers, as "intellectual heroes". Her memoir, Notes On Grief was positively praised by Kirkus Reviews as "an elegant, moving contribution to the literature of death and dying." Leslie Gray Streeter of The Independent said that Adichie's view on grief "puts
29253-458: The museum came under immense scrutiny for the hazy provenance of the displayed items. This was followed by the hiring of a new curator of Indigenous American art for the museum, Dr. Patricia Marroquin Norby , who is of Purépecha descent. The Met's collection of Greek and Roman art contains more than 17,000 objects. The Greek and Roman collection dates back to the founding of the museum—in fact,
29452-418: The museum in 1913 and 1925. Another collection landmark took place in 1936, when George Cameron Stone bequeathed 3,000 pieces of Asian armor. Bashford Dean, the first arms curator, did much to build up the collection, including with gifts he and his friends made directly to the Met, which enabled the purchase of his personal collection. Stephen V. Grancsay, the second arms curator at the museum, ably added to
29651-665: The museum in 1975, included many significant paintings, and is particularly strong in early Renaissance material. Over a period of decades, Charles and Jayne Wrightsman donated 94 works of unusually high quality to the Department of European Paintings, the last of which came with Mrs. Wrightsman's bequest in 2019. Notwithstanding the contributions made by Marquand, Altman, Bache, and Lehman, it has been written that "the Wrightsman paintings are highest in overall quality and condition." The latter "collected expertise as well as art," and advanced technology made better choices possible. Additionally,
29850-626: The museum included Asian art in their collections. Today, an entire wing of the museum is dedicated to the Asian collection, and spans 4,000 years of Asian art. Major Asian civilizations are well-represented in the Met's Asian department. The pieces on display represent diverse types of decorative art , from painting and printmaking to sculpture and metalworking . The department is well known for its comprehensive collection of Cambodian , Indian , and Chinese art (including calligraphy and painting ), as well as for its Nepalese and Tibetan works, and
30049-401: The museum's first accessioned object was a Roman sarcophagus , still currently on display. Though the collection naturally concentrates on items from ancient Greece and the Roman Empire , these historical regions represent a wide range of cultures and artistic styles, from classic Greek black-figure and red-figure vases to carved Roman tunic pins. Highlights of the collection include
30248-544: The museum's great Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection was laid by the Louisine (1855-1929) and Henry Osborne Havemeyer (1847-1907) collection. The most important portion of their immense collection came to the museum after the death of Louisine in 1929. It was particularly strong in works by Courbet, Corot, Manet, Monet, and, above all, Degas. The other remarkable gift of this material came from Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg, who, before they promised their collection to
30447-450: The museum's other principal projects. As a token of its appreciation the name Qatar Gallery was adopted for the museum's Gallery of the Umayyad and Abbasid Periods. This followed the announcement that the Met and Qatar Museums had entered into a partnership to foster their exchange with regards to exhibitions, activities, and scholarly cooperation. The Met's Department of Arms and Armor
30646-477: The museum's vast American wing. Art of Native America was accompanied by a statement from the institution. "The American Wing acknowledges the sovereign Native American and Indigenous communities dispossessed from the lands and waters of this region. We affirm our intentions for ongoing relationships with contemporary Native American and Indigenous artists and the original communities whose ancestral and aesthetic items we care for." Contrary to this public statement,
30845-407: The museum. Before Rockefeller's collection was gifted to the Met, Rockefeller founded The Museum of Primitive Art in New York City with the intention of displaying these works, after the Met had previously shown little interest in his art collection. In 1968, the Met had agreed to a temporary exhibition of Rockefeller's work. However, the Met then requested to include the arts of Africa, Oceania, and
31044-562: The nation. Ivans opened three galleries and a study room in 1971. He curated almost sixty exhibitions, and his influential publications included How Prints Look (1943) and Prints and Visual Communication (1953), in addition to almost two hundred articles for the museum's Bulletin. Ivans and his successor A. Hyatt Mayor (hired 1932, 1946-66 Curator of Prints) collected hundreds of thousands of works, including photographs, books, architectural drawings, modern artworks on paper, posters, trade cards, and other ephemera. Important early donors to
31243-403: The neighborhood to give a visible representation of the role of women in history and to serve as a symbol of equality. The neighborhood residents defeated a move by conservative politicians to remove the mural in 2021 through a petition drive of collected signatures. Luke Ndidi Okolo, a lecturer a Nnamdi Azikiwe University said: Adichie's novel treats clear and lofty subjects and themes. But
31442-412: The objects in the Islamic collection were originally created for religious use or as decorative elements in mosques . Much of the 12,000 strong collection consists of secular items, including ceramics and textiles , from Islamic cultures ranging from Spain to North Africa to Central Asia . The Islamic Art department's collection of miniature paintings from Iran and Mughal India are a highlight of
31641-411: The organization canceled the 2024 annual awards festival. The festival was supposed to be held on May 8 in New York City and Los Angeles. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ( / ˌ tʃ ɪ m ə ˈ m ɑː n d ə ə ŋ ˈ ɡ oʊ z i ə ˈ d iː tʃ i . eɪ / ; born 15 September 1977) is a Nigerian novelist, short-story writer and activist. Regarded as
31840-499: The recording of the real, as it were, it is more than that, it seeks to infuse the real with meaning. As events unfold, we do not always know what they mean. But in telling the story of what happened, meaning emerges and we are able to make connections with emotive significance." She stated that literature could build bridges between cultures because it united the imaginations of all who read the same books. Adichie accepted an invitation to speak in London in 2012, at TEDxEuston, because
32039-469: The reign of Shah Tahmasp I , the most luxurious of all the existing Islamic manuscripts , also belongs to this museum. Other rarities include the works of Sultan Muhammad and his associates from the Tabriz school "The Sade Holiday", "Tahmiras kills divs", " Bijan and Manijeh ", and many others. The Met's collection of Islamic art is not confined strictly to religious art , though a significant number of
32238-407: The reinstallation of an exterior glass curtain, which had deteriorated, as well as the galleries in their entirety, which house 3,000 works. The Met's Asian department holds a collection of Asian art, of more than 35,000 pieces, that is arguably the most comprehensive in the US. The collection dates back almost to the founding of the museum: many of the philanthropists who made the earliest gifts to
32437-414: The relationship between beauty, fashion, style and socio-political inequalities, Adichie became committed to promoting body positivity as a means to acquire agency . She began to focus on body politics , taking particular pride in her African features such as her skin colour, hair texture and curves, and wearing bold designs featuring bright colours to make a statement about self-empowerment. Adichie
32636-459: The right to freedom of speech against those who undermine facts with partisan messaging. Adichie married Ivara Esege, a Nigerian doctor, in 2009, and their daughter was born in 2016. The family primarily lives in the United States because of Esege's medical practice, but they also maintain a home in Nigeria. Adichie has Nigerian nationality and permanent resident status in the US. Larissa MacFarquhar of The New Yorker stated that Adichie
32835-597: The second annual Eudora Welty Lecture on 8 November 2017 at the Lincoln Theatre in Washington, D.C. The lecture was presented to a sold-out crowd and focused on her development as a writer. That year, she also spoke at the Foreign Affairs Symposium held at Johns Hopkins University. Her talk focused on the fragility of optimism in the face of the current political climate. Adichie and Hillary Clinton delivered
33034-580: The second floor of the main building), the Robert Lehman Collection, and the Jack and Belle Linsky Collection (both on the first floor); a number of paintings also hang in other departmental galleries. Some of the medieval paintings are permanently exhibited at the Met Cloisters. The current curator in charge of the European Paintings department is Stephan Wolohojian. The collection began when 174 paintings were purchased from European dealers in 1871. Almost two-thirds of these paintings have been deaccessioned, but quality paintings by Jordaens, Van Dyck, Poussin,
33233-438: The seduction of a friend's boyfriend in "Light Skin". Miscarriage, motherhood and the struggles of womanhood are recurring themes in Adichie's works, and are often examined in relation to Christianity, patriarchy , and social expectation. For example, in the short story "Zikora", she deals with the interlocking biological, cultural and political aspects of becoming a mother and expectations placed upon women. The story examines
33432-413: The singer "reached many people who would otherwise probably never have heard the word feminism." But, she went on to state that the sampling caused a media frenzy with requests from newspapers world-wide who were keen to report on her new-found fame because of Beyoncé. Adichie said, "I am a writer and I have been for some time and I refuse to perform in this charade that is now apparently expected of me". She
33631-475: The socio-political and economic life of the community. Her style often focuses on strong women and adds a gendered perspective to topics previously explored by other authors, such as colonialism, religion, and power relationships. Adichie often separates characters into social classes to illustrate social ambiguities and traditional hierarchies. By using narratives from characters of different segments of society, as she reiterates in her TED talk, "The Danger of
33830-641: The spirit of the "bold LGBTQ activist [of] the African literary world where homosexuality is still treated as a fringe concept." Since 2017, Adichie has been repeatedly accused of transphobia , initially for saying that "my feeling is trans women are trans women" in an interview aired on Channel 4 in Britain. She apologised, and acknowledged that trans women need support and that they have experienced severe oppression, but she also stated that transgender women and other women's experiences are different, and one could acknowledge those differences without invalidating or diminishing either group's lived experience. After
34029-524: The state and serve as mentors to Nigerian youth. Adichie was among those he felt qualified as "intellectual heroes", who had "push[ed] forward the boundaries of social change". Adichie's book Half of a Yellow Sun was adapted into a film of the same title directed by Biyi Bandele in 2013. In 2018, a painting of Adichie was included in a wall mural at the Municipal Sport Center in the Concepción barrio of Madrid , along with 14 other historically influential women. The 15 women were selected by members of
34228-517: The stories included in The Thing Around Your Neck —Adichie examined these themes using the family as a miniature representation of violence. Female sexuality, both within patriarchal marriage relationships and outside of marriage, is a theme that Adichie typically uses to explore romantic complexities and boundaries. Her work discusses homosexuality in the context of marital affairs in stories such as "Transition to Glory", and taboo topics such as romantic feelings for clergy in Purple Hibiscus , as well as
34427-477: The subjects and themes, however, are not new to African novels. The remarkable difference of excellence in Chimamanda Adichie's Purple Hibiscus is the stylistic variation—her choice of linguistic and literary features, and the pattern of application of the features in such a wondrous juxtaposition of characters' reasoning and thought. Adichie's work has garnered significant critical acclaim and numerous awards. Book critics such as Daria Tunca wrote that Adichie's work
34626-407: The way in which the country's identity was shaped. Half of a Yellow Sun , her major work on the war, highlights how policies, corruption, religious dogmatism and strife played into the expulsion of the Igbo population and then forced their reintegration into the nation. Both actions had consequences, and Adichie presents the war as an unhealed wound because of political leaders' reluctance to address
34825-464: The way the West sees Africa and more interested in how Africa sees itself. Adichie, in a 2011 conversation with Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina , stated that the overriding theme of her works was love. Using the feminist argument " The personal is political ", love in her works is typically expressed through cultural identity, personal identity and the human condition, and how social and political conflict impact all three. Adichie frequently explores
35024-501: The whole history of the subject. The distinctive "parade" of armored figures on horseback installed in the first-floor Arms and Armor gallery is one of the most recognizable images of the museum, which was organized in 1975 with the help of the Russian immigrant and arms and armor scholar, Leonid Tarassuk (1925–90). In 2020 the Met announced Ronald S. Lauder's promised gift of 91 objects from his collection, describing it as "the most significant grouping of European arms and armor given to
35223-448: The world in a way that can change it. Minister radically in a real, active, practical, 'get your hands dirty' way". She has spoken at many commencement ceremonies, including at Williams College (2017), Harvard University (2018), and the American University (2019). Adichie was the first African to speak at Yale University 's Class Day, giving a lecture in 2019 that encouraged students to be open to new experiences and ideas and "find
35422-453: The world. A great number of period rooms , ranging from first-century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Met's galleries. Since the late 1800s, the Museum has been collecting diverse materials from all over the world. Its outreach to "exhibition designers, architects, graphic designers, lighting designers, and production designers" helps the museum to maintain its collection in good condition. Beginning in
35621-472: Was a medical doctor there. In 2000, she published her short story "My Mother, the Crazy African", which discusses the problems that arise when a person is facing two completely opposite cultures. After finishing her undergraduate degree, she continued studying and simultaneously pursued a writing career. While a senior at Eastern Connecticut, she wrote articles for the university paper Campus Lantern. She received her bachelor's degree summa cum laude with
35820-559: Was among the Nigerian writers who objected to the law, calling it unconstitutional, unjust and "a strange priority to a country with so many real problems". She stated that adults expressing affection for each other did not cause harm to society, but that the law would "lead to crimes of violence". Adichie was close friends with Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina , whom she credited with demystifying and humanising homosexuality when he publicly came out in 2014. Writer Bernard Dayo said that Adichie's eulogy to Wainaina in 2019 perfectly captured
36019-602: Was born and raised in Enugu , the capital of Enugu State . After her secondary education, she attended the University of Nigeria , where she was the editor of the school's magazine, The Compass . At nineteen, she left Nigeria for the United States to undertake further education at Drexel University , and would later study at three universities: Eastern Connecticut State University , Johns Hopkins University , and Yale University . Adichie grew up bilingually and writes in English and Igbo . Citing Chinua Achebe and Buchi Emecheta as her inspiration, she first published Decisions ,
36218-482: Was born in Umunnachi , Anambra State. Grace began her university studies in 1964, at Merritt College in Oakland , California, and later earned a degree in sociology and anthropology from the University of Nigeria. The Biafran War broke out in 1967 and James started working for the Biafran government at the Biafran Manpower Directorate. During the war, Adichie lost her maternal and paternal grandfathers. After Biafra ceased to exist in 1970, her father returned to
36417-405: Was born in Abba in Anambra State , and studied mathematics at University College, Ibadan , from which he graduated in 1957. James married Grace Odigwe on 15 April 1963, and moved with her to Berkeley in the United States, to complete his PhD at the University of California . After returning to Nigeria, he began working as a professor at the University of Nigeria at Nsukka in 1966. Her mother
36616-430: Was delivered by Hillary Rodham Clinton, who then engaged in conversation with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie . PEN America has canceled its World Voices festival after twenty-eight of the 61 nominated authors withdrew their books from consideration in the annual PEN America Awards ceremony as they condemned America's Pen for failing to strongly condemn what they called the genocide in Palestine. The cancellation comes days after
36815-476: Was disappointed by the media portrayal, but acknowledged that "Thanks to Beyoncé, my life will never be the same again." Adichie was outspoken against critics who later questioned the singer's credentials as a feminist because she uses her sexuality to "pander to the male gaze". In defence of Beyoncé, Adichie said: "Whoever says they're feminist is bloody feminist." Scholar Matthew Lecznar said that Adichie's stature as "one of most prominent writers and feminists of
37014-433: Was discovered by a white man named Mungo Park , although the indigenous people had fished the river for generations. However, Odenigbo cautions Ugwu that, even though the story of Park's discovery is false, he must use the wrong answer or he will fail his exam. Adichie's works about African diaspora consistently examine themes of belonging, adaptation and discrimination. It is often shown as an obsession to assimilate and
37213-400: Was founded by Aline Bernstein and Irene Lewisohn . In 1946, with the financial support of the fashion industry, the Museum of Costume Art merged with The Metropolitan Museum of Art as The Costume Institute, and in 1959 became a curatorial department. Today, its collection contains more than 35,000 costumes and accessories. The Costume Institute used to have a permanent gallery space in what
37412-562: Was founded in 1870 with its mission to bring art and art education to the American people. The museum's permanent collection consists of works of art ranging from the ancient Near East and ancient Egypt , through classical antiquity to the contemporary world. It includes paintings , sculptures , and graphic works from many European Old Masters , as well as an extensive collection of American , modern, and contemporary art . The Met also maintains extensive holdings of African , Asian , Oceanian , Byzantine , and Islamic art . The museum
37611-447: Was included on Vanity Fair ' s 2016 International Best-Dressed List , and cited Michelle Obama as her style idol. That year, Maria Grazia Chiuri , the first female creative director of French fashion company Dior , featured in her debut collection a T-shirt with the title of Adichie's TED talk, "We Should All Be Feminists". Adichie was surprised to learn that Dior had never had a woman rule its creative division and agreed to
37810-710: Was introduced including the first public appearance of scholar Tariq Ramadan since the State Department's ban on his exclusion from the United States. Ramadan's appearance took place at a sold-out event on April 8, 2010, at the Great Hall of Cooper Union in New York City, and was organized in collaboration with the ACLU. Organized by festival director Laszlo Jakab Orsos and founder Salman Rushdie , PEN World Voice Festival 2012 took place throughout New York City from April 30 to May 6 and featured Margaret Atwood , Jennifer Egan , Tony Kushner , Herta Müller , Paul Auster , Giannina Braschi , Martin Amis , Michael Cunningham , E.L. Doctorow , and Colson Whitehead . Highlights included
38009-478: Was invited to be a visiting writer at the University of Michigan in Flint in 2014. The Renowned African Writers/African and African Diaspora Artists Visit Series required her to engage with students and teachers from high schools and universities, patrons of the local public library, and the community at large through forums, workshops, and lectures that discussed Purple Hibiscus , Americanah , and her personal writing experiences. Clips from her talks "The Danger of
38208-424: Was known as the "Basement" area of the Met because it was downstairs at the bottom of the Met facility. However, due to the fragile nature of the items in the collection, the Costume Institute does not maintain a permanent installation. Instead, every year it holds two separate shows in the Met's galleries using costumes from its collection, with each show centering on a specific designer or theme. The Costume Institute
38407-697: Was raised Catholic , and the family's parish was St. Paul's Parish in Abba. Adichie's father died of kidney failure in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic , and her mother died in 2021. As a child, Adichie read only English-language stories especially by Enid Blyton . Her juvenilia included stories with characters who were white and blue-eyed, modeled on British children she had read about. At ten, she discovered African literature and read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, The African Child by Camara Laye , Weep Not, Child by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o , and Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta . Adichie began to study her father's Biafran stories when she
38606-608: Was selected as one of 15 women to appear on the cover of the issue of British Vogue in an issue guest-edited by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex . In a 2021 discussion at Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus , Adichie spoke with the former Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel , and journalists Miriam Meckel and Léa Steinacker . They discussed that, for democracy to survive, people needed to preserve their traditions and history, be informed about intolerance and learn to accept diversity. Adichie said that she often uses fashion to educate people about diversity, and Merkel agreed that it could serve as
38805-424: Was that of the Leslie and Johanna Garfield Collection of British Modernism in 2019. The broadened collecting horizons of the museum in the post-Black Lives Matter era have been displayed in the exhibition of contemporary political works on paper called "Revolution, Resistance, and Activism", held at the Met in 2021-22. It included such works as the Guerrilla Girls' famous poster Do women have to be naked to get into
39004-429: Was the idea of persuading Nigerians to buy local products, as opposed to purchasing garments abroad, as had been done in the past. The posts on her page do not focus on her private life, but instead highlight her professional appearances all over the world, in an effort to show that style has the power to push boundaries and have global impact. She won a Shorty Award in 2018 for her "Wear Nigerian" campaign, and in 2019
39203-424: Was the keynote speaker of the 2021 Reykjavik International Literature Festival held in the Háskólbíó cinema at the University of Iceland , and presented the talk In Pursuit of Joy: On Storytelling, Feminism, and Changing My Mind. On 30 November 2022, Adichie delivered the first of the BBC 's 2022 Reith Lectures , inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt 's " Four Freedoms " speech. Her talk explored how to balance
39402-414: Was the only language her daughter spoke at the age of two. Speaking at the inaugural Gabriel García Márquez Lecture in Cartagena, Colombia in 2019, Adichie addressed violence in the country and urged leaders to focus on educating citizens from childhood to reject violence and sexual exploitation and end violent behaviors. Her speech was given in the Nelson Mandela barrio, one of the poorest neighborhoods of
39601-408: Was thirteen. In visits to Abba, she saw destroyed houses and rusty bullets scattered on the ground, and would later incorporate them and her father's accounts into her novels. Adichie began her formal education, which included both Igbo and English. Although Igbo was not a popular subject, she continued taking courses in the language throughout high school. She completed her secondary education at
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