Artists and Art Education in Africa

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Parent Category: Saffron Catalogue
Category: Forthcoming

Art and Art Education in Africa, edited by Elsbeth Court and part of Saffron African Art and Society Series, 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 africa’95 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 in this book 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 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.

Audience and Readership
The audience for Artists and Art Education in Africa is likely to include art educators and students, art historians, critics and curators and gallerists, as well as 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 educationor 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 Editor of Artists and Art Education  in Africa

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 on the Council of the African Studies Association, UK.

Her publications include Drawing, Research and Development (co-edited, Longmans, 1992), joint author of the Seven Stories about modern art in Africa (Whitechapel,1995), ‘Africa on Display…’ in E Barker, ed Contemporary Cultures of Display (Yale, 1999) and  many essays in journals and catalogues, including Hazina: Traditions, Trade and Transitions in Eastern Africa (London & Nairobi, 2006). She is currently writing on modernities in Kenya and their effective kinds of art education.

Table of Contents

  • Series Editor's Note | Sajid Rizvi
  • Acknowledgements
  • Prologue:  Artists, Apprentices, Students and Visionaries | Professor John Picton, SOAS, 2011
  • Foreword | Professor Richard Fardon, SOAS, former Chair, Centre of African Studies, London
  • Introduction | Elsbeth Court, SOAS, London
  • My favourite quotations from africa’95 | Sultan Somjee, formerly National Museums of Kenya

I > ORIGINS AND  DEVELOPMENTS  OF FORMAL ART EDUCATION

  • Forty years of formal art education in Nigeria, 1995 | Professor Solomon Irein Wangboje, Benin City, Nigeria
  • Recalling Professor Wangboje, 2005 | Dr Frank Ugiomoh, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
  • Innovations in art pedagogy for sculpture at Nsukka Art School, 2004 | Dr Ernest Okoli, University of Nigeria, Nsukka
  • Comments: Kalidou Sy with reference to Senegal, 1995
  • Origins of art education in Sudan, 1997 | Professor Ahmed el Tayib Zeinelabdeen, Khartoum, Sudan
  • Comments by Ibrahim el Salahi, Oxford, UK
  • Recalling Professor Eltayib, 2005 | Fathi & Elamin Osman, Kerma Arts, Khartoum, Sudan
  • The birth and growth of East African modern art at Makerere University, Uganda, 2002 | Professor Pilkington Ssengendo, Kampala, Uganda
  • Update by Dr George Kyeyune, Head Makerere University Art School
  • Responses to the Voices of our East, 1995 | A poem | Professor Pitika Ntuli, Durban, South Africa

II > INITIATIVES IN EDUCATION

  • Reforming school art in Kenya with material culture, 1995 | Dr Sultan Somjee
  • Symposium comments, Professor Elizabeth Orchardson, Emerita, Kenyatta University
  • Developing a regional art school for the Southern African Development Community, 1995 | Stephen Williams, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
  • Symposium comments & prepared responses by Dr G Kahari, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe; David Elliott, formerly Oxford MOMA, UK
  • Enterprise and Inter-sectorial partnerships in East & South Africa, 2006 | Professor Jackie Guille, University of Northumbria
  • Triangle international artists' workshops as they relate to Africa, 2004 | Robert Loder, Gasworks, London, UK
  • Symposium comments

III > BEYOND SCHOOL: REPORTS  ON NON-FORMAL EDUCATION

  • The case of ceramics: Ladi Kwali, 1995 | Dr John Tokpabere Agberia, Abraka, Nigeria        
  • Learning to paint in South Africa, 1995 | David Koloane, Fordsburg Artists’ Studios, Johannesburg, South Africa
  • Commercial gallery workshops: Nairobi, Kenya, 1995 | Wanjiku Nyachae, Nairobi & Birmingham, UK
  • 'Taxi couleur' workshop project, 1995 | Francisco D'Almeida, Grenoble, France & Alexandria, Egypt
  • Pamoja: Yorkshire Sculpture Park International Artists Workshop, 1995 | Anna Kindersley, Gasworks, UK

with

  • Just a summertime, 1997 photo essay & text | Djibril Sy, Dakar, Senegal
  • Diab’s Art Centre, Khartoum, 2006 | Taghred Elsahouri

IV > ARTISTS'  PERSPECTIVES:  PROFILES , POETICS , PORTFOLIOS

  • At Home and Abroad, a poem, 1995 | Pitika Ntuli, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
  • Stepping Stones, 2007 | Dr Atta Kwami, Kwame Nkrumah University, Kumasi Ghana
  • Pathways, 2006 | Professor Magdalene Odundo, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, UK
  • Performance & Persona, 1992-2007 | Dr Hassan Musa
  • L’Homme du Sud with the artist’s statement, 2005 | Kalidou Sy, Dakar, Senegal & Bloomington, Indiana
  • Afterwords
  • Response (with reference to UNESCO Arts education: 2001 & 2006]
  • Professor Rachel Mason, Emerita, Roehampton University, London
     

APPENDIX I

  • for the Symposium, 23-24 September 1995
  • Programme
  • List of exhibitions at SOAS during africa95 season
  • Exhibitions.doc EAP version dated 260706
  • List of participants and sponsors
  • Summary of Eastern Art Report's Myths & Mothballs Conference to review africa’95, 1996
  • Africa's Time: Tempestuous Temporality, review of El Tiempo de Africa, curated by Simon
    Njami at Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno: CAAM, Atlantic Center for Modern Art, Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain; 11 December 2000 - 4 February 2001 and Sala de Exposiciones de Plaza de Espana, Madrid, Spain, 19 April - 31 May 2001.
     
  • Index
     

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