African Art and Agency in the Workshop

"Mozambican freedom fighters direct artistic cooperatives to anti-colonial ends. An entrepreneurial Zambian king "brands" his people through patronage of distinctive visual and performance arts. These and equally compelling case studies demonstrate how African workshops have long mediated collective expression and individual imagination. In their nuanced contextualization of "the workshop" across cultural, geographical, and temporal diversities, the editors frame apprenticeship, cultural constructions of creativity, pragmatic materiality, and phenomenologies of production as no Africanist art historians have before, and in ways applicable anywhere in the world."

~Allen F. Roberts,, University of California, Los Angeles

"A closer examination of the workshop provides important insights into art histories and cultural politics. We may think we know what we mean when we use the term 'workshop,' but in fact the organization of groups of artists takes on vastly different forms and encourages the production of diverse styles of art within larger social structures and power dynamics."

~Victoria Rovine, University of Florida

"African Art and Agency in the Workshop is a major contribution to African art history. It ushers in new canonical knowledge and a vital, wide-ranging discussion of the history of workshops within a thoughtful analytical frame."

~Anthropology of Work

"This is a very good book, and however involved the process of putting it together has been, the end result should inform students of African art history for some time to come."

~African Studies Bulletin

"This worthy addition to Indiana University Press' African Expressive Cultures series contains a broad array of data derived from archival research and fieldwork, as well as artists' observations drawn from direct workshop participation."

~International Journal of African Historical Studies

"Anthropologists and aficionados alike will undoubtedly be stimulated by many of the ideas put forth in this work, which deal with all the most current contemporary issues in the fields of African anthropology and art history. And since the workshop theory is universal in scope, it deserves the attention it is given here and further investigations by others."

~African Arts

"Taken as a whole, the case studies provide a wide window into the very diverse structural and functional characteristics of workshops. They also clearly describe how African workshops have served both contemporary political and cultural needs and have responded to patronage, whether it be traditional or stimulated by tourism. Equally important, some of the case studies demonstrate that diversity of forms can thrive within workshop organizations propelled by individual creativity and a desire to self-differentiate."

~African Studies Review

"[These] essays are augmented with data from fieldwork done by the editors in Côte d'Ivoire, Cameroon, Nigeria, Kenya, and Tanzania. To make the volume as formidable as it stands, chapters have been added by the coeditors' intellectual colleagues who have conducted fieldwork in the above-named countries, as well as in Uganda, Mozambique, Zambia, and South Africa. Spring 2014"

~Africa Today

"This interesting volume is highly recommended, especially for institutions that have collections covering artistic practice, African studies, postcolonial studies, and art history."

~ARLIS/NA Reviews