About Artists and Art Education in Africa
Art & Art Education in Africa documents an extraordinary symposium of 130 visual art specialists from twenty countries, mostly scholar-practitioners, who debated about art, African art and art education in Africa at the peak of the africa95 season in London. The collected texts indicate a variety of conditions which, in turn, generate contingent ways of becoming and being a contemporary artist. These comparative configurations of artistic production and practice move the discourse beyond the rhetoric – and, indeed, prejudice – that persists in obscuring the actualities and accomplishments of ‘African art’. The beam of continuity in the book is the sharing of both visionary and practical approaches to education in and through art.
Some thirty texts include (i) historical and institutional backgrounds for specialised art education, (ii) case studies of specific situations: some that involve the processes of decolonisation and re-engagement with traditions and others that set out regional and trans-Africa initiatives and (iii) artist’s statements in prose and performance about their careers and concerns. The majority of the texts are edited versions of the original papers, most of which have been up-dated, revised and, or supplemented (as indicated by the year). There are six newly written texts plus the Introduction and a Foreword.
The editors anticipate the audience for this book will be drawn, in general, from art educators, art historians, critics, students, gallerists, curators and, in the context of Africa, from development professionals and other cultural workers, Africanists and African art enthusiasts. For readers outside of Africa, the book presents the scholarship and viewpoints of African educators, artists and cultural workers, whose insights into art and art-making challenge western conventions such as a boundary between formal and non-formal education or between art and craft and preconceptions about ethnic traditions and material culture. The book demonstrates the expressive arts are proactive in building the contemporary cultures of African societies.
About the Editors
Elsbeth Court worked in practical art and in formal education as a teacher and researcher during 17 years in Tanzania and Kenya before coming to the University of London for her doctoral research about picture-making in Kenya. Since 1990, she lectures on ‘African art’ for the foundation Art History course at SOAS and more recently for Birkbeck College, both University of London. She served on the World Council of International Society for Education through Art: INSEA (1984-87) and is currently on the Council of the African Studies Association, UK.
Her publications include Drawing, Research and Development (co-edited, Longmans, 1992), Seven Stories about modern art in Africa (co-authored, Whitechapel,1995), ‘Africa on Display…’ in E Barker, ed Contemporary Cultures of Display (Yale, 1999) and many essays in journals and catalogues, most recently, Hazina: Traditions, Trade and Transitions in Eastern Africa (London & Nairobi, 2006).
Rachel Mason is Professor of Art Education at Roehampton University, London. She has taught art and art education in England, Australia and the USA and is well known for her research and publications on multicultural, cross-cultural and international art education. She is former President and Vice-President of the National Society for Education in Art and Design and the International Society for Education through Art and edits the International Journal of Education through Art.
Her books include Art Education and Multiculturalism (second edition, 1996); Beyond Multicultural Art education: international perspectives (co-edited with Doug Broughton, 1999), Por um Arte Educaçao Multicultural (Mercarda do Letras, 2001) and Issues in Arts Education in Latin America (co-edited with Larry O’Farrell, 2004).
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Foreword | Richard Fardon, former Director, Centre of African Studies
- Introduction | Elsbeth Court and Rachel Mason, co-editors [with Salah Hassan]
- My favourite quotations from africa95 | Sultan Somjee
- List of Abbreviations
I | BEGINNINGS AND DEVELOPMENT OF FORMAL ART EDUCATION
- Forty years of formal art education in Nigeria | Solomon Irein Wangboje
- Recalling Professor Wangboje | Frank Ugiomoh
- Innovations in art pedagogy for sculpture, Nsukka Art School, Nigeria | Ernest Okoli
- Comments | Kalidou Sy with reference to Senegal 1995, updated
- Origins of art education in the Sudan | Ahmed el Tayib Zeinelabdeen (with notes by Ibrahim el Salahi)
- Recalling Professor Zeinelabdeen | Fathi and Elamin Osman
- The birth and growth of East African modern art at Makerere University, Uganda | Pilkington Ssengendo
- Responses to the Voices of our East | Pitika Ntuli [poem]
II | INITIATIVES BETWEEN FORMAL & NONFORMAL EDUCATION
- Reforming school art in Kenya with material culture | Sultan Somjee
- Conference comments and prepared responses | E Orchardson-Mazrui, R Mason
- Developing a regional art school for the Southern African Development Community | Stephen Williams
- Conference comments and prepared responses | G Kahari, D Elliott
- Enterprise and Inter-sectoral partnerships in East and South Africa | Jackie Guille
- Triangle international artists' workshops as they relate to Africa | Robert Loder
III | BEYOND SCHOOL: REPORTS ON NON-FORMAL EDUCATION
- The case of ceramics: Ladi Kali | John Tokpabere Agberia
- Learning to paint in South Africa | David Koloane
- Commercial gallery workshops: Nairobi, Kenya | Wanjiku Nyachae
- ‘Taxi couleur’ workshop project | Francisco D’Almeida
- Pamoja: Yorkshire Sculpture Park International Artists Workshop | Anna Kindersley
- *Rachid Diab's Art Centre, Khartoum | Tagred Elsanhori
- Pamoja: Just a summertime | Djibril Sy [Photo essay]
IV | ARTISTS' PERSPECTIVES: PROFILES, POETICS, PORTFOLIOS
- At Home and Abroad | Pitika Ntuli [poem]
- Memoir | Stepping Stones | Atta Kwami
- Memoir | Pathways | Magdalene Odundo
- Performance: Who invented Africans? Hassan Musa
- Tips: How not to become an African artist | Hassan Musa
- Memoir, Hassan Musa on calligraphy
- Artist’s Statement with L'Homme du Sud | Kalidou Sy
AFTERWORDS
- Response | Rachel Mason [with reference to UNESCO Arts Education: 2001 and 2006]
- On the Art Academy | John Picton
- General Bibliography
APPENDICES
- Symposium: African artists: schools, studio and society, 23-24 September 1995 | Programme
- List of exhibitions at SOAS during africa95 season
- List of participants and sponsors [attendees]
- Summary: Myths & Mothballs Conference, part of africa95
- Index
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