Future Thinking: Propositions and Possibilities for African Art History

Fifty years—more or less a generation—is a significant landmark for African Arts. The journal is now an elder, with all of the gravitas that role entails, and yet it is reborn with each new issue. Like all the best elders, African Arts embraces change without adopting the trends of any particular moment. With apologies for the layers of self-referentiality, we note that in his First Word for the first issue in this year's fiftieth anniversary commemoration (vol. 50, no. 1), Tobenna Okwuosa cited Mary Nooter Roberts, who had observed in her own 2005 First Word that African Arts is “synonymous with the study of African art” (Roberts 2005:1). So it is. Indeed, the trajectory of African art history is manifested in the artistic genres, regions, time periods, and thematic concerns that have populated this journal's pages. For young researchers as for prominent scholars, engaging with African Arts is...