Research Guides: AAAS/FA-74B Introduction to African Art: Exhibition catalogs

Exhibiting African art in context

Representing Africa in American Art Museums by Kathleen Bickford Berzock (Editor); Christa Clarke (Editor)
Call Number: Main Library Stacks N7380.5 .R47 2011
Thirteen essays by curators of African art in American museums examine the creations of their collections and consider a variety of important issues of collecting, display, and representation.
Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly by Sally Price
Call Number: Main Library Stacks GN36.F82 P3756 2007
An in-depth and well-documented examination of how the Quai Branly came to be, and how it presents artworks and represents cultures of the non-Western world.

Annotations from "Art, Art History, and the Study of Africa," Oxford Bibliographies Online

ReCollecting Dogon (Menil Collection)
"Featuring texts by specialists from Mali, France, Britain, and the United States, ReCollecting Dogon examines the visual culture of the Dogon peoples of Mali and its 20th-century Western history." Includes a photographic essay and a video.

Free digitized exhibition catalogs from the Africa Center (formerly the Museum for African Art):

Resonance from the Past: African Sculpture from the New Orleans Museum of Art
Features approximately 100 works of art from the New Orleans Museum of Art, including masks and figures, musical instruments, ceramics, and fabric and beadwork costumes chosen from the extensive African art collection of the museum for their exceptional range of style and quality.
In the Presence of Spirits: Selections from the National Museum of Ethnology, Lisbon
Presents approximately 120 pieces from Western, Central, and Southern Africa, with emphasis upon those from Guinea Bissau and Angola, both former Portuguese colonies, many rarely seen before in the U.S.
African Masterpieces from Munich: The Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde
Presents 450 selections from one of Germany’s premiere ethnographic museums whose collection of over 20,000 African objects was drawn from many sources, including the royal ethnographic collection and collections made by scientists, explorers, art lovers, and other museums.
African Masterpieces from the Musée de l’Homme
Presents a selection of masterpieces from the vast ethnographic collection of France’s preeminent ethnographic museum.