It's fair to say that African Arts' 1993 coverage (vol. 26, no. 1) of the Center for African Art's exhibition “Africa Explores: 20th Century African Art” constitutes a watershed moment in the journal's relationship with contemporary African art. Including wildly differing reviews by Olu Oguibe and Francesco Pellizzi as well as a response to them by Sidney Kasfir, the journal used the 1991 exhibition as a vehicle for thinking about the state of contemporary art on the continent. Moreover, with a first word by Thomas McEvilley that explicitly asked about the very category of “contemporary African art,” this particular issue of African Arts followed and reinforced debates raging about contemporary art at the time. It also helped to define how Africanist art historians would think about the field—at least in the journal's pages—into the early twenty-first century. From that moment, in addition to groundbreaking research articles on modern and contemporary...
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Spring 2017
March 01 2017
“Daringly Experimental and Versatile”: African Arts and the Contemporary
Steven Nelson
Steven Nelson
Steven Nelson is Director of the African Studies Center and Professor of African and African American Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also a former editor of African Arts. He is currently completing two books titled, “On The Underground Railroad” and “Structural Adjustment: Mapping, Geography, and the Visual Cultures of Blackness.” nelsons@humnet.ucla.edu
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Steven Nelson
Steven Nelson is Director of the African Studies Center and Professor of African and African American Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also a former editor of African Arts. He is currently completing two books titled, “On The Underground Railroad” and “Structural Adjustment: Mapping, Geography, and the Visual Cultures of Blackness.” nelsons@humnet.ucla.edu
Online ISSN: 1937-2108
Print ISSN: 0001-9933
© 2017 by the Regents of the University of California.
2017
African Arts (2017) 50 (1): 16–21.
Citation
Steven Nelson; “Daringly Experimental and Versatile”: African Arts and the Contemporary. African Arts 2017; 50 (1): 16–21. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/AFAR_a_00328
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