5 things not to miss at the Walters Art Museum’s sumptuous exhibit, ‘Ethiopia at the Crossroads’

Who knew the Virgin Mary had a soft spot for artists?

And yet, the Mother of God intervened at least once to protect a paint-spattered reprobate, if a 17th-century Ethiopian hymnal chronicling the Miracles of Mary is to be believed.

The left page of the little book — on view at the Walters Art museum for the next three months — contains a drawing of a man who comes perilously close to dying for his art while painting a religious icon from atop a scaffold.

“The text originated in the Middle East, but the Ethiopians took the story and ran with it,” said Christine Sciacca, who curated “Ethiopia at the Crossroads,” a comprehensive new exhibit that chronicles 1,750 years of art and history in the only African nation other than Liberia never to be colonized.

“The scaffold breaks and the artist takes a tumble,” Sciacca said. “But Mary grabs him by his arm before he hits the ground.”

And it’s just one of 225 objects in what the museum describes as the first major art exhibition in America to examine Ethiopian culture and artistic traditions from their origins to the present. After the Walters, the exhibition will travel to two other museums: the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, and Ohio’s Toledo Museum of Art.

About 40% of the artifacts are drawn from the Walters’ holdings, while the remainder are on loan from 25 other museums ranging from London’s British Museum to the Institute of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa.

“The story of Ethiopian art is one of community,” museum director Julia Marciari-Alexander wrote in the catalog accompanying the exhibits. “It shows how the movement of people is mirrored by the movement of their artworks, in the past as in the present.”

The exhibit is chock full of wow moments, from a 12-foot long parchment fan full of big-eyed prophets and saints made during the 15th century, to an 18th- or 19th-century brass crown. There’s a black velveteen and gold embroidered cape owned by former Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie and a pair of austere and evocative 19th-century wooden grave markers.

Below are five other objects you won’t want to miss:

King Ezana coins

It’s easy to overlook these two tiny gold coins, each about the size of a thumbnail and minted sometime between 300 and 340 A.D. But they tell a fascinating story about fourth-century Ethiopia as the nation transitioned from the worship of Roman gods to Christianity.

Sciacca said Christianity didn’t become the official religion of the Holy Roman Empire until 380 A.D. – several decades after Ethiopia was converted to Christianity by King Ezana. “Ethiopia is the oldest Christian nation in the world after Armenia,” she said.

The earlier of the two gold coins shows Ezana in profile with a crescent moon above his head symbolizing the Roman goddess Diana. The later coin contains the same profile – but the monarch is standing beneath a cross.

“You can see the shift in the culture as it is happening,” Sciacca said.

Crosses

“Ethiopia at the Crossroads” is full of, well, crosses. There are large crosses hoisted on poles during religious processions and handheld crosses displayed in homes. But these ornate artifacts are quite different from the relatively humble crucifixes found in Western churches.

For one thing, they’re made of elaborately scrolled metal instead of wooden beams, and they’re adorned with crimson or brocade stoles.

“Ethiopians dress their crosses with cloth,” Sciacca said. “The crosses have arms that come up at the bottom so you can weave the fabric through them. And the shape of the crosses tells you where they were made. We have a pear-shaped cross on view from [the town of] Lalibela, while a wheel-shaped cross is from [the former ancient city of] Aksum.”

But what is most striking about these crosses is what – or who – is not on them.

What happened to Jesus?

“Early Ethiopian images of the crucifixion don’t show Christ,” Sciacca said.

“It isn’t until later, when the Ethiopians started to see more Western imagery of Jesus as a ‘man of sorrows’ that they began to embrace this conception of him. Their theology emphasized the triumph of Christ.”

Mother-in-law baskets

Visitors to traditional homes owned by the Harari people likely will be welcomed into a living room, where the walls are filled with grass baskets woven with eye-catching, intricate patterns and vivid colors. The baskets are both decorative and practical (they are used to serve food), and some may be hundreds of years old.

Young girls in the eastern Ethiopian city have been taught basket-weaving techniques for centuries; according to tradition, brides presented their new mother-in-laws with a pair of baskets when they married into the family.

“There was a particular pattern on the baskets, and when she received them, the mother-in-law would put them on the wall,” Sciacca said. “It would be a sign to anyone who came to visit how many of her sons were married.”

What is the tradition honoring married daughters?

“There are no baskets for married daughters,” Sciacca said, and laughed. “They are the ones with the bleeding fingers from weaving all those sharp grasses.”

Healing scrolls

These long, thin strips of parchment inscribed with Biblical prayers and simple drawings were once so controversial that, according to an essay by African arts specialist Kristen Windmuller-Luna, Ethiopians were harshly punished for using them.

“The majority were actually commissioned by women who used the scrolls to cure illness or to deal with their problems,” Sciacca said.

Purchasers of the scrolls would visit a “debtera,” or a man affiliated with the church who was not a priest. Each customer would provide her name, birthdate and list of ailments.

“He would consult a book with different formulas that would tell him which prayers drawn from the Bible would be most efficacious,” Sciacca said. “Each scroll was about the height of the person who commissioned it.”

The purchaser often folded her scroll into a small bundle, fitted it into a leather case and wore it around her neck.

“Healing scrolls are still being made today,” Sciacca said.

“Brave New World II”

You will have no problem identifying this video installation by the Rome-based artist Theo Estefu. Not only is it the last artwork in the exhibit, it will be the one with a line of people waiting for their turn to interact with it.

From a distance, “Brave New World II” resembles a painting. But as viewers approach, the mirrored glass transforms into a kaleidoscope. Observers start identifying different images: Balinese dancers, an Ethiopian religious procession, Italian commercials, the Statue of Liberty.

“I spent weeks with this artwork,” Sciacca said, “and I still find new images I haven’t seen before.”

Approach even closer, and the “painting” inside the gilded rectangular frame turns into a three-dimensional globe. Stick your head inside the frame – there’s plenty of room – to see images of your face reflected in a kind of amphitheater, as if you were attending a session of the United Nations.

The apparent message could not be more appropriate for the holidays: We are all part of this great big, beautiful world, implicated in its problems but also in its extraordinary richness and joy.

“Ethiopia at the Crossroads” runs through March 3 at the Walters Art Museum, 600 N. Charles St.

Admission is free. For more information, call 410-547-9000 or visit thewalters.org.