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African art describes modern and historical paintings, sculptures, installations, and other visual culture from native or indigenous Africans and the African continent.The definition may also include the art of the African diasporas, such as African-American, Caribbean or art in South American societies inspired by African traditions.
African folk art consists of a variety of items: household objects, metal objects, toys, textiles, masks, and wood sculpture. Most traditional African art meets many definitions of folk art generally, or at least did so until relatively recent dates.
The National Museum of African Art is the Smithsonian Institution's African art museum, located on the National Mall of the United States capital. Its collections include 9,000 works of traditional and contemporary African art from both Sub-Saharan and North Africa, 300,000 photographs, and 50,000 library volumes. It was the first institution ...
The royal arts of the Benin Kingdom of southern region Nigeria affirm the centrality of the Oba, or divine king, portraying his divine nature. While recording the kingdom's significant historical events and the Oba's involvement with them, they also initiate the Oba's interactions with the supernatural and honor his deified ancestors, forging a continuity that is vital to the kingdom's well-being.
The issue of anonymity and authorship has long troubled the field of African art history, particularly as it relates to the political disparities between Africa and the West. [10] Such information was, at least initially, rarely sought in the field and deemed unnecessary and even undesirable by many collectors. [2]
Direct images of African deities are relatively infrequent, but masks in particular are or were often made for traditional African religious ceremonies; today many are made for tourists as "airport art". [2] African masks were an influence on European Modernist art, which was inspired by their lack of concern for naturalistic depiction.
Before the Berlin Conference of 1885, traders and explorers to Africa purchased or stole art as souvenirs and curios, [4] spreading beyond the coast; ivory objects made along African coasts had been collected for centuries, and many were made by Africans for purchase by Europeans, mainly in areas reached by the Portuguese, such as the Afro-Portuguese ivories.
The art found in the traditional homestead of the Ndebele people dates back to a thousand years and is evidenced by the rock art found in the Matopos [2] [3] attributed to the Khoi-San. [ 4 ] [ 1 ] [ 5 ] In 2016 the US Ambassador's' fund for Cultural preservation (AFCP) [ 6 ] awarded a grant to document the Ndebele traditional art form of hut ...