Contemporary Arts of Africa

Research Sources & Tips

I. Course Reserves

Check out the Course Reserves.

II. Facts and Overviews

73 Thematic Essays on African Art (with images and bibliographies).
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

African Art in Detail.
Chris Spring.
Oversize: N7380 .S67 2009

African Art: an Introduction.
Frank Willett
Oversize: N7380 .W5 2003

A History of Art in Africa.
Monica Blackmun Visonà ... [et al.]; introduction by Suzanne Preston Blier; preface by Rowland Abiodun.
Oversize: N7380 .H54 2001

An Anthology of African Art: the Twentieth Century.
edited by N'Goné Fall and Jean Loup Pivin.
Oversize: N7391.65 A5713 2002

The Continuum Encyclopedia of Native Art: Worldview, Symbolism, and Culture in Africa, Oceania, and Native North Amerca
Hope B. Werness; line drawings by Joanne H. Benedict, Tiffany Ramsay-Lozano, and Hope B. Werness; maps by Scott Thomas.
Bookstacks: E98.A7 W49 2000

Tracing Memory: a Glossary of Graphic Signs and Symbols in African Art and Culture.
Clémentine M. Faik-Nzuji.
Oversize: NX650.W75 F35 1996

III. Books on Various Topics

A. Use Library Catalogs to find books

1. Tufts Libraries Catalog

2. WorldCat (beyond Tufts)

B. Searches & Results

(note the search pattern; modify to your own needs)

Broader Context:

Art -- Africa (the continent).

Narrower Focus:

Art -- Ghana (a country)

Specific Interests:

Sculpture -- Africa (a particular medium).

Architecture -- Africa.

Artists:

"Yinka Shonibare"

Types of Documents (see below their special research value):

Art, African -- Catalogs.

Art, African -- Exhibitions.

Exhibition and Museum Catalogues are uniquely valuable sources, which include:

*Fundamental data on each work of art;

*Official images of the artworks;

*Curatorial statements/essays;

*essays by art critics/historians;

*list of scholarly publications on the art,

*sometimes, artists’ interviews,

*and more.

Following are examples from the Library collections:

African Art: a Century at the Brooklyn Museum
William C. Siegmann; with an essay by Joseph Adande; and contributions by Kevin D. Dumouchelle.
Oversize: N7380.5 .B76 2009

Africa: Arts and Cultures
edited by John Mack.
Oversize: N7380 .A34 2000

Diaspora Memory Place: David Hammons, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Pamela Z
edited by Salah M. Hassan, Cheryl Finley.
Oversize: N7380.5 .H36 2008

Art of the Senses: African Masterpieces from the Teel Collection
edited by Suzanne Preston Blier; essays by Suzanne Preston Blier, Christraud M. Geary, Edmund Barry Gaither; catalogue by William E. Teel with Suzanne Preston Blier.
Oversize: NB1091.65 .A77 2004

Path of Discovery in the Catalogs

1. Find a title/author (assigned readings/Course Reserves);

2. Note the descriptive language of the Catalog record.

3. Use that language in further searches

e.g. Click on subject/author in the record to see further results and related topics.

Author	Kasfir, Sidney Littlefield.
Title	*Contemporary African Art* .
Publisher	New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 2000.
Contents	New genres: inventing African popular culture -- Transforming the workshop -- Patrons and mediators -- Art and commodity -- The African artist: shifting identities in the postcolonial world -- The idea of a national culture: decolonizing African art -- Migration and displacement.
Subject	Art, African -- 20th century..

**You will need to consult WorldCat (a catalog of books and other materials from libraries worldwide), as our collection is comparatively limited in the subject area of contemporary African arts.

Appendix I. Writing and Citing

Writing the Art History paper (Dartmouth Writing Program)

Chicago Style Manual

V. More Specific and Current Discussions

A. Use the subject databases to find journal articles.

1 & 2. JSTOR and Project Muse

JSTOR is a favorite with its full texts in core journals of all disciplines. Project Muse does not include exactly the same JSTOR journals, but it has more recent and current articles on many topics.

Expand your search into more databases and from various perspectives

3. Academic OneFile
All subjects; a convenient Quick Start. Here are some sample findings:

ARTbiliographies Modern
International Bibliography of Art
Architecture (the Avery Index)

4. Film and Television Literature Index

5. Art Full Text (1984 - present)

6. Art Index Retrospective (1929- 1982)

7. Africa Studies

8. When use GoogleScholar, set your Library Links to access Tufts full texts.

B. Current Scholarship

Reviews of recent books and other types of review articles in major journals in a discipline are likely to summarize the current state of research in an area.

Two examples:

Okeke-Agulu, Chika, John Picton, Colin Richards, Peter Probst, Ikem Okoye, Sidney Kasfir, Okwui Enwezor, et al. "NKA Roundtable: Contemporary African Art History and the Scholarship." NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art no. 26 (2010): 80-151.

Vogel, Susan. "Whither African Art? Emerging Scholarship at the End of an Age." African Arts 38, (2005): 12-17, 91.

A Few Notable Journals:

Architectural History

Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art

C. More Articles like this "perfect" one

How:

Search, in Arts and Humanities Citation Index, for the article you have read.

For example:

Roberts, Allen F. "Chance Encounters, Ironic Collage + Recycled Objects as Contemporary African Art." African Arts 25: 2 (1992) 54-63+97-98.
References: 54 Times Cited: 5

You can, then, look up, in the record, the 54 references that Allen F Roberts cited for his article and, in turn, 5 articles (so far) that cited his. The assumption is that these articles address related issues.

Note:

1. Not every single article is cited;
2. Influential authors are cited more often;
3. More recent publications take time to be cited.

D. Finding Full Texts

1. Click on the button in your search results screen to a window of three sequential options:

a. link to the digital full text when available;

b. link to a Library Catalog search for the print journal;

c. link to ILliad for requesting the article when the above two options are negative.

2. Search for a journal directly here:

a. Tufts Library Catalog (including e-journals)

b. Electronic journals list

c. Use ILliad to request your article, if Tufts does not have your journal.

E. Request Articles/Books

Set up for your ILliad account

Use ILLiad, our Interlibrary Loan Service, to request articles, books and other materials that are not available at Tufts.

IV. Popular Press

A. Current:

Book, Movie, Music, Play, And Video Reviews (in LexisNexis)

Factiva (more international coverage)

B. Historical

African Newspapers, 1800-1922

Times Digital Archive (1785 - 1985)

New York Times Online Archive
(1851 - 3 years before current date)

Readers' Guide Retrospective (1890-1982)

American Periodicals (1740 - 1940)

British Humanities Index (1962- )
British Periodicals (1680s - 1930s)

IV. Images

ARTstor

Artifact (Tufts University)
(images for this course by your professor)

Image Quest (more than two million rights-cleared images)

Art Project (museums from around the world by Google)