Silk, Stone, Souqs, and Slaves
Focusing on two traded goods that moved through the medieval Mediterranean—silk, and enslaved people—this lecture asks how the architecture built to house the exchange of precious goods, from the qaysariyyas in Al-Andalus to the lonja at Valencia, was shaped by the materials traded in it, the (unfree) people contributing to its building, and the functions that the building took over centuries (public bank, prison, chapel, trading floor, and maritime consulate).
Beate Fricke teaches European Medieval Art History. Before joining the University of Bern (Switzerland) in 2017, she was Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2024/25 she was Slade Lecturer at the University of Oxford. She is leading the research project The Inheritance of Looting. Medieval Trophies to Modern Museums (SNF). Together with Finbarr Barry Flood she co-authored the monograph Tales things Tell. Material Histories of Early Globalisms, 2023. She is founder of the journal 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual. (link: https://21-inquiries.eu/en)
To be able to access the Columbia campus, we kindly ask you to register at this Google form by November 1st if you plan on attending: https://forms.gle/FpdeNJ8yjvW2Wyor6
