Research Guides
- University of Washington Libraries
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- African Art
- Arts Institutions & Museum Collections
African Art: Arts Institutions & Museum Collections
UW Art Library guide on finding books, journals, and databases on African Art.
Notable Museum Collections
Nearly all countries in Africa have at least one national museum housing African art. Below are links to some of the most popular African art collections in the Western hemisphere. Those linked here contain informative digital collections and digitized objects for your reference. You may find a longer list of largely US museums and galleries that house African art collections from the Arts Council of the African Studies Association.
- Smithsonian National Museum of African Art This collection "embraces all of the artistic expressions of Africa’s artists, from antiquity to the current moment. The museum is also home to a state-of-the-art conservation lab, an unparalleled photographic archives, and the world’s leading library for the history of Africa’s arts."
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art The online collection features high-resolution, open-access images of works in the collection, along with cultural and chronological information. These object records—an ongoing research project—also provide data on the history of works from the time of their creation to their acquisition by the Museum.
- The British Museum The British Museum curates collections of material and visual culture relating to indigenous people across the African continent and to the cultures and societies of the diaspora.
- Fowler Museum at UCLA The Fowler Museum at UCLA explores global arts and cultures with an emphasis on Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the Indigenous Americas—past and present.
Additional Sources
- Art Restitution, Oxford BibliographiesThe Oxford Bibliographies entry on "Art Restitution" offers a massive list of the most important and significant sources related to the subject.
African Art Collections
- The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics, 2018 (PDF) Commissioned by the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, the aim of the report was to assess the history and present state of publicly owned French collections of African artworks originating from illicit or otherwise disputed acquisitions, as well as claims and a plan for subsequent steps for eventual restitutions.
The Activist Collector: Lida Clanton Broner's 1938 journey from Newark to South Africa by Call Number: N7380.5 .C53 2022Publication Date: 2023
The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution by Publication Date: 2020
African Art Reframed: Reflections and Dialogues on Museum Culture by Publication Date: 2020
Reshaping the Field: Arts of the African Diasporas on Display by Call Number: N6538.B53 R42 2022Publication Date: 2022
Arts management, cultural policy, & the African disaspora by Call Number: eBookPublication Date: 2022
Metropolitan Fetish: African Sculpture and the Imperial French Invention of Primitive Art by Call Number: eBookPublication Date: 2019
