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Summoning the Ancestors

Southern Nigerian Bronzes

By Nancy Neaher Maas and Philip M. Peek

A survey of little-studied sacred African bells and ritual objects

Summoning the Ancestors explores a collection of 72 ofo (small ritual objects) and 74 bells produced in southern Nigeria by Igala, Igbo, Edo, Yorùbá, and other...

Meleko Mokgosi

Bread, Butter, and Power

By Erica P. Jones

A contemporary African artist's call for democracy

Botswana-born Meleko Mokgosi is an emerging contemporary artist whose large-scale figurative paintings are garnering growing accolades and attention worldwide. In all his work, Mokgosi emphasizes narrative storytelling. This approach...

Striking Iron

The Art of African Blacksmiths

By Allen F. Roberts, Tom Joyce, Marla C. Berns

For more than two millennia, African blacksmiths have transformed one of Earth’s most basic natural resources into objects of life-changing utility, empowerment, prestige, spiritual potency, and astonishing artistry—shaping African cultures in the most fundamental ways....

Arts of Global Africa

The Newark Museum Collection

By Christa Clarke

The Newark Museum has been at the forefront of American art museums in its representation of the arts of Africa since 1917. Newark’s collection is notable for its embrace of the entire continent and its...

Zina Saro-Wiwa

Did You Know We Taught Them How to Dance?

By Amy L. Powell. With Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa, Stephanie LeMenager, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Taiye Selasi, and Zina Saro-Wiwa

Zina Saro-Wiwa: Did You Know We Taught Them How to Dance? is the first publication on the work of Zina Saro-Wiwa, a British-Nigerian video artist and filmmaker based in Brooklyn. Occupying the space between documentary...

Africa at the Tropenmuseum

By Paul Faber, Sonja Wijs, and Daan Van Dartel

Africa at the Tropenmuseum is not meant to be a general book on art from Africa, but rather a treatise on the formation and development of a specific Africa collection, which started at the beginning...

Africa in the Market

By Silvia Forni, Christopher B. Steiner

While many publications focus on the aesthetics and symbolism of African art, few explore the historical dynamics and exchanges that have informed the way people in Africa have created, preserved, collected, and sold their artworks...

Vigilant Things

On Thieves, Yoruba Anti-Aesthetics, and The Strange Fates of Ordinary Objects in Nigeria

By David T. Doris

Winner of the 2012 Melville J. Herskovits award (African Studies Association)

Throughout southwestern Nigeria, Yoruba men and women create objects called aale to protect their properties—farms, gardens, market goods, firewood—from the ravages of thieves. Aale are...

The Shattered Gourd

Yoruba Forms in Twentieth Century American Art

By Moyo Okediji

The Shattered Gourd uses the lens of visual art to examine connections between the United States and the Yoruba region of western Nigeria.

In Yoruba legend, the sacred Calabash of Being contained the Water of Life;...

The Gelede Spectacle

Art, Gender, and Social Harmony in an African Culture

By Babatunde Lawal

This remarkable study explores the use of the visual and performing arts to promote nonviolence and social harmony in sub-Saharan Africa. It focuses on Gelede, a popular community festival of masquerade, dance, and song, held...