This book opens with the question, What is African art? The answer is a brilliantly colorful and detailed look at the myriad materials and genres, forms and meanings, cultural contexts and expressions that comprise artistic traditions across this vast and varied continent. Viewing artworks in their contexts--ancient and modern, urban and rural, western and eastern, decorative and functional--the book is nothing less than a virtual tour of African culture. Masks, textiles, royal art, sculpture, ceramics, tools and weapons--in each instance, the book features examples that reveal the most significant aspects of workmanship, materials, and design in objects of wood, stone, ivory, clay, metalwork, featherwork, leather, basketwork, and cloth. Photographs of each piece alongside close-ups of fine details afford new views of these works and allow for intriguing comparisons between seemingly unrelated objects and media. The featured details evoke the hand and eye of the most accomplished craftspeople across Africa, past and present. In sum, these photographs, along with Chris Spring's enlightening commentary, offer an experience of African art that is at once broad and deep, richly informed and intimately felt. They are, at the same time, a kaleidoscopic view of art from prehistory to gestures prefiguring the future.

The Brooklyn Museum was one of the first North American institutions to collect and exhibit African material culture as art rather than artifact. Today the museum's collection numbers more than six thousand pieces and is noted for its artistic quality and educational value, as well as a breadth and depth that would be impossible to achieve today. Ancient as well as contemporary art is included in the collection's vast holdings, while the figurative sculpture and masks of Central Africa comprise its most significant focus. Nearly two hundred of those pieces are featured in this large-format compendium, which includes essays by the museum's curator of African art and a leading scholar on the subject. Taking readers through a cultural exploration of the continent, the collection encompasses regions from Western Sudan and the Southwestern Congo to the Equatorial Forest and Ethiopia. Carefully photographed and presented in luminous colour, these pieces create a stunning introduction to the rich traditions of African art and culture. AUTHORS: William Siegman served as the Brooklyn Museum's curator of African and Oceanic art from 1987 until his retirement in 2007. He is currently a consulting curator with the Saint Louis Art Museum. Joseph Adande lectures at the National University of Benin, Abomey-Calavi. He was the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Kevin D. Dumouchelle is Interim Assistant Curator of the Arts of Africa and the Pacific Islands at the Brooklyn Museum. ILLUSTRATIONS 235 images

"Informed by the latest scholarship yet written for the general reader, this has been the first comprehensive study to present the arts of Africa in art historical terms. A History of Art in Africa covers all parts of the continent, including Egypt, from prehistory to the present day and includes the art of the African Diaspora. Many aspects of visual culture are given detailed consideration, including sculpture, architecture, and such quintessentially African forms as masquerades, festivals, and personal adornment. The arts of daily life, of royal ceremony, and of state cosmology receive compelling discussions. Throughout, the authors emphasize the cultural contexts in which art is produced and imbued with meanings." "Among the ancient works illustrated are masterpieces in brass, gold, ivory, stone and terracotta. Religious arts serving Islamic and Christian communities are presented, as are fascinating hybrid arts that periodically arose from African interactions with Europe, Asia and the Americas. Twentieth-century arts are explored as part of the vibrancy of modern Africa and as ingenious responses to historical change. 'Twenty-first-century African artists, and artists of the African Diaspora, are presented in the context of changing global economies and new theoretical positions." "This expanded and revised second edition provides a new chapter on African artists working abroad, and five new short essays on cross-cultural topics such as tourist arts, dating methods, and the illicit trade in archaeological artifacts. The illustrations - featuring a vast and rich array of images of artworks, archival and contemporary field photographs, explanatory drawings and plans, and individual objects displayed in museums and in use - have likewise been greatly extended, with many more pictures now shown in color."--BOOK JACKET.

In working to build a sense of nationhood, Ghana has focused on many social engineering projects, the most meaningful and fascinating of which has been the state's effort to create a national culture through its schools. As Cati Coe reveals in Dilemmas of Culture in African Schools, this effort has created an unusual paradox: while Ghana encourages its educators to teach about local cultural traditions, those traditions are transformed as they are taught in school classrooms. The state version of culture now taught by educators has become objectified and nationalized—vastly different from local traditions. Coe identifies the state's limitations in teaching cultural knowledge and discusses how Ghanaians negotiate the tensions raised by the competing visions of modernity that nationalism and Christianity have created. She reveals how cultural curricula affect authority relations in local social organizations—between teachers and students, between Christians and national elite, and between children and elders—and raises several questions about educational processes, state-society relations, the production of knowledge, and the making of Ghana's citizenry.

A critical history of the major themes and accomplishments of well-known and obscure African art over the past fifty years examines artists and the new avenues of creative expression in post-colonial Africa.

Coretta Scott King Award–winning creator Ashley Bryan’s adaptation of a tale from the Ila-speaking people of Zambia is now available in board book format, featuring Bryan’s cut-paper artwork. We’ll see the difference a touch of black can make. Just remember, whatever I do, I’ll be me and you’ll be you. Explore the appreciation of one’s own heritage and beauty. In this story, the colorful birds of Africa ask Blackbird, who they think is the most beautiful of birds, to color them black so they can be beautiful too, though Blackbird reminds them that true beauty comes from the inside.

Looks at the life and legacy of the physician known for his art collection, eccentricities, and the creation of the Barnes Foundation.