From Ritual to Modern Art (HB)

A richly illustrated volume addressing the long-standing imbalance in the representation and appreciation of African art. Outside Africa, East African art has often been assumed to be more or less non-existent, and African art scholarship has been dominated by non-African institutions and Western aesthetic frameworks. This book, edited by Manfred Ewel and Anne Outwater, is one of the few published within Tanzania to counter that narrative, presenting sculptural art and its traditions from an African perspective. The volume grew out of a symposium, ‘The Significance of Traditional Cultures for Today’s Society’, organised by the National Museums of Tanzania and the German Cultural Centre in Dar es Salaam. Papers from that gathering, together with additional articles on the history and current state of sculpture in Tanzania, combine sociological, ethnological, and art-historical approaches. This hardback edition is internationally distributed by African Books Collective.