Edited by Elizabeth Harney

Toronto: Wedge Curatorial Projects, 2008. 142 pp., 50 color and 80 b&w photos, index. $60 cloth.

Flava: Wedge Curatorial Projects (1997-2007) presents a collection of photographic images exploring issues related to black identity and culture. The photographs, taken in Diaspora communities around the...]]>Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Luba.-a0206055426Luba

by Mary Nooter Roberts and Allen F. Roberts

Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2007. 145 pp., 63 b/w photos, bibliography. $34.95 paper

Luba art has been popularized through books and exhibitions on African art but serious academic studies that address the meaning of Luba art remain scattershot and largely superficial. Moreover, there is a notorious absence of an insider...]]>Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Paris+Primitive%3a+Jacques+Chirac's+Museum+on+the+Quai+Branly.-a0206055425Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly

by Sally Price

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007; 224 pages, 10 half-tones, 1 map; $47.50 cloth, $19.00 paper

For those following the historic debates on museum representation, colonial collecting, and cultural patrimony surrounding the opening of the Musee du Quai Branly, the narrative in Sally Price's new...]]>Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Black+is+Beautiful%3a+Rubens+to+Dumas.-a0206055424Black is Beautiful: Rubens to Dumas

De Nieuwe Kerk

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

July 26-October 26, 2008

In the summer of 2008 the exhibition "Black is Beautiful: Rubens to Dumas" showed a wide-ranging selection of paintings of blacks made by Netherlandish and contemporary Dutch painters. This exhibition was very contentious. Some of the reviews denounced the exhibition...]]>Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Studio+Cameroon.-a0206055423Studio Cameroon

The Everyday Photography of Jacques Touselle

November 9, 2007-June 29, 2008

Pitt Rivers Museum

University of Oxford, England

The opening of the "Studio Cameroon" exhibition on November 9 2007 was one of the major events of the year at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. This unique display of portraits by Cameroonian photographer Jacques Touselle was...]]>Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Black+Womanhood%3a+Images%2c+Icons%2c+and+Ideologies+of+the+African+Body...-a0206055422Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body

Hood Museum

Dartmouth College

April 1-August 10, 2008

The groundbreaking recent exhibition "Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body," curated by Barbara Thompson at the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College (Fig. 1), featured more than one hundred sculptures, photographs, paintings,...]]>Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Man+Ray%2c+African+Art%2c+and+the+Modernist+Lens.-a0206055421MAN RAY, AFRICAN ART, AND THE MODERNIST LENS

OCTOBER 10, 2009-JANUARY 10, 2010

THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION, WASHINGTON DC

AUGUST 7-OCTOBER 10, 2010

THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA ART MUSEUM, CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA

OCTOBER 2010-JANUARY 2011

MASKS OF AFRICA--IDENTITIES HIDDEN AND REVEALED

APRIL 24, 2009--JANUARY 3, 2010

ROYAL MUSEUM FOR CENTRAL AFRICA

TERVUREN, BELGIUM

A CATALOGUE CO-PUBLISHED BY THE RMCA AND 5 CONTINENTS IN ENGLISH, FRENCH, AND DUTCH ACCOMPANIES THE EXHIBITION IS AVAILABLE FOR 39.90 [euro]

There is a popular saying in Nigeria, and if you spend any time on the streets there you will see it often, painted in bright script on the sides of trucks and buses, or affixed with self-sticking letters to the rear windows of cars:

The articles assembled here and in a forthcoming issue of African Arts (vol. 43, no. 1, Spring 2010) explore the theme of ephemeral art, and are based on two panels co-organized by Christine Mullen Kreamer and myself for the Triennial meeting of the Arts Council of the African Studies Association in March 2007. Applying equally to studio and tradition-based practices,...]]>Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/More+on+nationalism+and+Nigerian+art.-a0206055414The argument between Ugiomoh and Gbadegesin about nationalism in modern Nigerian art highlights the unfortunate situation of an African art history carried out without directly engaging the primary texts that framed such discourses in specific historical contexts. The history and role of the Zaria art society (1958-1962) in modern Nigerian art is the subject of much overvaluation and it is in...]]>Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+phenomenon+of+recuperation+at+the+Dak'Art+Biennale.-a0206055413In 1992, at the first edition of Dak'Art, Moustapha Dime (Senegal 1952-1998) won the Grand Prize for his sculpture La Dame d la culotte. This object, made from a large tree trunk into which the artist carved only breasts and inserted a large spike topped with a bit of scavenged plastic netting for a neck, head, and hair, achieved recognition for one of Senegal's now most famous avant-garde...]]>Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+radiance+of+the+King.-a0206055412Along with many other eager fans of both the curator and his subject, I visited the Ernie Wolfe Gallery in West LA shortly after the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama for the opening of "Out of Africa: Obama and McCain." The subheading on the fancy invite filled in a little of the back story: "Praise Portraits and Visual Narratives by the Ghanaian artists who brought us Extreme Canvas: Hand...]]>Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Africa+in+Paris%3a+on+expressive+cultures+from+the+early+twentieth...-a0200722860Africa in Paris: On Expressive Cultures from the Early Twentieth Century to the Present. From Cameroon to Paris: Mousgoum Architecture In and Out of Africa by Steven Nelson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 304 pp., 8 color, 101 b/w photos. $50.00 cloth

Bamako, Mali

November 24-December 23, 2007

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Situated "In the City and Beyond," the 7th African Rencontres biennial embraced an all-encompassing photographic territory that could be alternatively titled "The World" or "All of the Places Where People Are and Are Not." The biennial's vague "location"...]]>Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Dak'Art+2008.-a0200722856Dak'Art 2008

Musee de l'Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire and Galerie

Nationale, Bamako

May 9-June 9, 2008

Dakar, Senegal

First Impressions

Kinsey Katchka

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The 2008 Dak'Art Biennale of Contemporary African Arts marked the eighth edition of this important event on the continent, one that has been a critical launching point for...]]>Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Creative+reformation+of+African+art+traditions%3a+the+iconography+of...-a0200722855[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Since the colonial period, many African artists have been caught in a dilemma (Adepegba 1996) which, up to the 1960s, was phrased as a two-world disposition between tradition and modernity, and reflected in literary works. (1) During this period, the fervor of African nationalism reached a crescendo of expectations and desires for the creation of the new Africa (Vogel...]]>Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Moms+with+guns%3a+women's+political+agency+in+anti-apartheid+visual...-a0200722854The cover image from Sechaba, an anti-apartheid magazine published by the African National Congress (ANC) in 1968 (Fig. 1), features a common subject embraced by artists and familiar to art historians across historical eras and geographical locations: motherhood. (1) Like other mother and child images appearing in a wide range of visual media, the woman here conveys qualities that are...]]>Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Guro+masked+performers%3a+sculpted+bodies+serving+spirits+and+people.-a0200722853There was great commotion at Zuenoula on Saturday, February 13, 1999. (1) The car park was emptied of vehicles, making room for colorful bunting and a shaded platform from which various political figures could harangue the crowd, offer political speeches, and propose catchy slogans. Among these movers and shakers was a "native son," as people call the Minister of Youth and Culture, the...]]>Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Grass+Roots%3a+African+Origins+of+an+American+Art.-a0200722852GRASS ROOTS: AFRICAN ORIGINS OF AN AMERICAN ART

GIBBES MUSEUM OF ART

CHARLESTON, SC

AUGUST-NOVEMBER 2008

NATIONAL UNDERGROUND RAILROAD FREEDOM CENTER

CINCINNATI, OH

FEBRUARY s-APRIL 20, 2009

FOWLER MUSEUM AT UCLA

Willie Cole (Fig. 1), like many African-American artists of his generation--those born or spending their early childhoods in the 1950s--reflects on the necessarily intertwined subjects of sub-Saharan Africa and the history of Africans in the Americas in his work in ways that take full advantage of personal history, the twin developments of the fields of American...]]>Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Dollar+Falls%2c+transnational+dynamics%2c+and+mediums+of+national+art.-a0200722848My response to "[Dis]placement of National Art in a Transnational Artworld" is framed by the provocative mixed-medium installation Dollar Falls commissioned by the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (NGZ), Harare, for its fiftieth anniversary exhibition, January-February 2008. The large-scale, collaborative installation, bearing witness to the nation's fathomless crises, engaged the viewing public...]]>