What is African Art? is a historiography of African art studies. It is a survey of how art from Africa has been defined by scholars, critics, and curators based in Europe and America that was developed out of a methods seminar led by Peter Probst at Tufts University. Today the advanced study of historical African art is becoming a phantom field—haunted by its past, overcome by presentism, and suffering from the general hollowing out of the humanities on college campuses. At this hinge moment, this new and thoughtful review of the history of the field is quite timely and most welcome. The book seeks to clarify how “we” (Probst's term, by which he means scholars and advocates of African art, mostly in the United States and Europe) got to where “we” are now. It reviews much of the work of other scholars who have likewise surveyed and critiqued the field...

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