African Art: Start Your Research: Scholarly Articles

UW Art Library guide on finding books, journals, and databases on African Art.

Finding Scholarly Articles

There are several approaches to take if you're looking for peer-reviewed, scholarly articles about African art. To do the broadest search possible, you can do a keyword search from the UW Libraries homepage (or the search box below) and limit your results using the filters on left side of your results screen (you can llimit your results list to only journal articles, and/or peer-reviewed results). If you'd like to narrow your search to only arts related scholarly articles, conduct a keyword search within Art & Architecture Source and utilize the filters in the same manner there. If you want your search to be even more specific, you can search within individual journal titles, such as those listed below.

Journals & Magazines

African Arts

Since 1967, African Arts has presented original research and critical discourse on traditional, contemporary, and popular African arts and expressive cultures. The journal offers readers peer-reviewed scholarly articles concerning a striking range of art forms and visual cultures of the world’s second-largest continent and its diasporas, as well as special thematic issues, book and exhibition reviews, features on museum collections, exhibition previews, artist portfolios, photo essays, contemporary dialogues, and editorials.

NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art

Since 1994, Nka focuses on publishing critical work that examines contemporary African and African Diaspora art within the modernist and postmodernist experience and therefore contributes significantly to the intellectual dialogue on world art and the discourse on internationalism and multiculturalism in the arts. Nka mainly includes scholarly articles, reviews (exhibits and books), interviews, and roundtable discussions.

Revue Noire

Revue Noire was a quarterly printed magazine dedicated to African contemporary art, published from 1991 to 2001 by Editions Revue Noire.

Tribal Art Journals & Magazines

Step by Step Guide to Find Journals

Finding journals

UW Libraries Search

Databases

Art & Architecture Source This link opens in a new window
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Comprehensive resource covering fine, decorative and commercial art, as well as photography, folk art, film, architecture, and architectural design.
Oxford Bibliographies This link opens in a new window
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Scholarly, annotated listings of the most important and significant sources related to various disciplines: do a search for African Art. Results will include bibliographies of Adornment, Dress, and African Arts of the Body, Arts of the Dogon, and Egyptian Art, among others.

Bibliography of Africana Periodical Literature Database
This database contains over 180,000 records from over 800 journals. Includes the Quarterly Index of African Periodical Literature.
African Women Bibliographic Database
Contains over 44,000 records. Database indexes six types of materials: books and government documents; articles appearing in edited books; periodical and journal articles; Masters theses and Ph.D. dissertations; conference papers; and more.

Africa Bibliography This link opens in a new window
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The Africa Bibliography is an authoritative guide to works in African studies published under the auspices of the International African Institute annually since 1984.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
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Scholarly journals and books in all disciplines.
Project Muse This link opens in a new window
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Collection of humanities & social sciences electronic journals & 20,000+ ebooks.