AFRICAN ART REFRAMED, reflections and dialogues on museum culture

375pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, Urbana, 2020

Foreword by Simon Njami. 

"This book is nothing less than a major breakthrough in museum studies. It is the first to systematically connect museum display practice to the recalibration of 'ethnic identity' that happens after colonialism. Its focus is on the global display of art and crafts from Africa and the African diaspora. But it is essential reading for anyone who wonders about what we want to hear from our forebears as we compel them to speak from behind glass, standing on plinths, and hanging on walls." Dean MacCannell, author of The Tourist: a new theory of the leisure class

"An important intervention featuring new approaches to 'unmixing' in the exhibitionary complex of African and African American Art. It features interviews with French and US-based curators and museum directors engaged in emerging contexts and legacies of ethnographic display." Peter J. Bloom, author of French Colonial Documentary: mythologies of h

umanitarianism

Bennetta Jules-Rosette is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Director of the African and African-American Studies Research Center at the University of California, San Diego. Her books include Black Paris: the African writers' landscape and The Messages of Tourist Art.

J.R. Osborn is Associate Professor of Communication, Culture, and Technology at Georgetown University.