POSSESSIONS, indigenous art / colonial culture / decolonization

368pp., b/w & colour illus., hardback, d.w., Second Edition, Thames & Hudson, London, (1999) 2022

ISBN: 9780500296592

This second edition includes a new introduction and concluding chapter.

A cross-cultural art history, focused on the encounter in Australasia between the visual cultures of European colonisation and Indigenous expression.

"... an astute and dynamic analysis of colonialism ... offers a powerful transdisciplinary theoretical and methodological model for understanding the varied practices - from appropriation to appreciation, from resistance to resilience - by which art meditates the colonial encounter for both settlers and indigenous peoples." Aaron Glass, Bard Graduate Centre, New York

"A pioneering text in postcolonial art history." Rosalind Polly Blakesley, University of Cambridge

Nicholas Thomas is Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, and Professor of Historical Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. His books include Islanders: The Pacific in the age of empire (Wolfson History Prize). He was co-curator of the 2018-19 exhibition Oceania for the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Paris.