This catalogue, dedicated to the permanent collection of African art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, is innovative in both approach and form and makes a distinct contribution to the genre of museum catalogues centered on African art in major museum collections. The Arts of Africa emphasizes scientific analysis and conservation, providing a perspective that has not been applied to a book-length, comprehensive treatment of an African art collection in a major US museum. Objects that were the subject of analysis by the conservation department cover a wide geographic and temporal expanse, from a depiction of the Last Supper from eighteenth-century Ethiopia to a Twins Seven-Seven work. Instead of treating objects as exemplars of particular types, the emphasis on conservation as a mode of inquiry considers the specific objects within the collection. The conservation perspective brings into focus a central argument and structuring principle of the...

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