Winner of the Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award from the Arts Council of the African Studies Association The Benue River Valley is the source of some of the most abstract, dramatic, and inventive sculpture in sub-Saharan Africa. A vast region, the Valley extends from the heart of present-day Nigeria eastward to its border with Cameroon, and is home to a large number of ethnic and linguistic groups, all of whom have produced sculptures that are remarkable for their variety. This book brings together figurative wood sculptures and ceramic vessels, masks, and elaborate bronze and iron regalia drawn from public and private collections in Europe and the United States, selected to exemplify important typologies within the region, along with many historical photographs. The 18 contributors demonstrate that the stylistic tendencies were constantly evolving due to cultural exchanges, mutual influences, and other points of contact in an area that like the Benue River itself was historically in a state of flux. These objects speak to us not only through their superb formal qualities but also through the circumstances of their being rooted in a turbulent past, situated between war and colonization.

The Arts of Kingship offers a sustained and detailed account of Hawaiian public art and architecture during the reign of David Kalākaua, the nativist and cosmopolitan ruler of the Hawaiian Kingdom from 1874 to 1891. Stacy Kamehiro provides visual and historical analysis of four key monuments--Kalākaua's coronation and regalia, the King Kamehameha Statue, 'Iolani Palace, and the Hawaiian National Museum--drawing them together in a common historical, political, and cultural frame. Each articulated Hawaiian national identities and navigated the turbulence of colonialism in distinctive ways and has endured as a key cultural symbol. These cultural projects were part of the monarchy's concerted effort to promote a national culture in the face of colonial pressures, internal political divisions, and declining social conditions for Native Hawaiians, which, in combination, posed serious threats to the survival of the nation. Kamehiro interprets the images, spaces, and institutions as articulations of the complex cultural entanglements and creative engagement with international communities that occur with prolonged colonial contact. Nineteenth-century Hawaiian sovereigns celebrated Native tradition, history, and modernity by intertwining indigenous conceptions of superior chiefly leadership with the apparati and symbols of Asian, American, and European rule.

Thirty years ago, Australian Aboriginal art was little more than a footnote to world art. Today, it is considered to be an important contemporary art movement, often promoted as being connected to a deep cultural past. Becoming Art provides a new analysis of the shifting cultural and social contexts that surround the production of Aboriginal art. Transcending the boundaries between anthropology and art history, the book draws on arguments from both disciplines to provide a unique interdisciplinary perspective that places the artists themselves at the centre of the argument. Western art history has traditionally regarded Aboriginal art as distanced from time and place. Becoming Art uses the recent history of Aboriginal art to challenge some of the presuppositions of western art discourse and western art worlds. It argues for a more cross-cultural perspective on world art history.

Since turning to the field of Jewish art over twenty years ago, Vivian Mann has concentrated on investigating Jewish ceremonial art within the dual contexts of Jewish law, and the history of decorative arts in general, including the ceremonial art made for the Church and the Mosque. The introduction to this volume considers classic rabbinic attitudes toward art and its relationship to spirituality. The remaining essays are divided into three groups: the first concerns medieval ceremonial art; the second, articles on the Jewish art of Muslim lands beginning with the early Middle Ages; and the third consists of essays on Judaica during the periods of the Renaissance and rococo.

Established by an act of Congress in 1989, the SmithsonianGCOs National Musuem of the American Indian (NMAI) is dedicated to the preservation, study, and exhibition of the life, languages, literature, history, and the arts of Native Americans. The museumGCOs collections span more than 10,000 years and GCo as this lavishly illustrated miniature volume demonstrates GCo include a multitlude of fascinating objects, from ancient clay figurines to contemporary Indian paintings, from all over the Americas.

This description is for the French edition. Le Nunatsiavut, region inuite du Canada qui possede une administration autonome depuis 2005, a une production artistique a part dans le monde de l'art canadien et de l'art inuit circumpolaire. Population inuite la plus meridionale au monde, le peuple cotier du Nunatsiavut a toujours vecu a cheval sur la limite forestiere, et les artistes et artisans inuits du Nunatsiavut ont eu acces a une flore et une faune arctique et subarctique tres diversifiees, a partir desquelles ils ont cree des uvres d'une surprenante variete. Les artistes du territoire se sont traditionnellement servis de la pierre et du bois pour sculpter, de la fourrure, du cuir et de la peau de phoque pour l'art mobilier et des graminees marines pour la vannerie, ainsi que de la laine, du metal, du tissu, des perles et du papier. Plus recemment, ils ont travaille avec des techniques que l'on retrouve en art contemporain, comme la peinture, le dessin, la gravure, la photographie, la video et la ceramique, sans pour autant delaisser les materiaux traditionnels, utilises de maniere novatrice et inusitee. SakKijajuk. Art et artisanat du Nunatsiavut est la premiere publication d'importance sur l'art des Inuits du Labrador. Ecrit pour accompagner une exposition itinerante majeure concue par The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery Division de St. John's, l'ouvrage comprend plus de 80 reproductions d'uvres de 45 artistes, une presentation de ces derniers et un essai de fond sur l'art au Nunatsiavut signe par la commissaire Heather Igloliorte. SakKijajuk "etre visible" - prendre sa place-dans le dialecte inuktitut du Nunatsiavut) constitue une occasion unique pour les lecteurs, collectionneurs, historiens de l'art et amateurs d'art du Sud comme du Nord de creer une relation particuliere avec le travail different, novateur et toujours saisissant des artistes et artisans inuits contemporains du Nunatsiavut.

This sumptuous slip-cased set presents the Barbier-Mueller Collection, which includes masterworks from the Aztec, Maya, and other cultures, in two magnificently illustrated books written by the greatest international specialists on the subject, and also includes Sotheby's sale catalogue. The Barbier-Mueller Collection of Pre-Columbian art, recently auctioned at Sotheby's, is the most comprehensive collection of its kind. Comprising some 300 works from Mexico, Central, and South America - wood and stone sculptures, ceramics, textiles, and ritual objects - it spans 1200 BC to AD 1500. The Barbier-Mueller Collection, one of the most important and wide-ranging art collections in the world, was begun by Josef Mueller in Paris in 1908 with the purchase of works by Hodler and Cezanne; the Swiss Mueller then looked beyond Western art and bought his first pre-Columbian piece, an Aztec stone water goddess, in 1920. Today, Mueller's daughter and son-in-law, Monique and Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller, continue to collect Western, African, Oceanic, and Cycladic art, which is frequently on loan to museums around the world. Text in English and French.

This wide-ranging survey, now established as the best single-volume introduction to Andean art and architecture on the market today, describes the strikingly varied artistic achievements of the Chavin, Paracas, Moche, Nasca, Chimu and Inca cultures, among others. For this fully revised third edition, Rebecca Stone has rewritten and expanded the text throughout, touching on many of the recent discoveries and advances in the field. These include new work on the huge stone pyramids and other structures at Caral; continued excavations of Inca child sacrifices perched on mountaintops throughout the empire, with their perfectly preserved clothing and miniature offerings of metal, ceramics and shell; spectacular murals and the remarkable burial of a tattooed female warrior-leader at the Moche site of Huaca Cao Viejo; and many new finds of high-status textiles, along with fresh analyses of weaving technology and new interpretations of designs and motifs.

Art as Politics explores the intersection of art, identity politics, and tourism in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Based on long-term ethnographic research from the 1980s to the present, the book offers a nuanced portrayal of the Sa'dan Toraja, a predominantly Christian minority group in the world's most populous Muslim country. Celebrated in anthropological and tourism literatures for their spectacular traditional houses, sculpted effigies of the dead, and pageantry-filled funeral rituals, the Toraja have entered an era of accelerated engagement with the global economy marked by on-going struggles over identity, religion, and social relations. In her engaging account, Kathleen Adams chronicles how various Toraja individuals and groups have drawn upon artistically-embellished ""traditional"" objects - as well as monumental displays, museums, UNESCO ideas about ""word heritage,"" and the World Wide Web - to shore up or realign aspects of a cultural heritage perceived to be under threat. She also considers how outsiders - be they tourists, art collectors, members of rival ethnic groups, or government officials - have appropriated and reframed Toraja art objects for their own purposes. Her account illustrates how art can serve as a catalyst in identity politics, especially in the context of tourism and social upheaval. Ultimately, this insightful work prompts readers to rethink persistent and pernicious popular assumptions - that tourism invariably brings a loss of agency to local communities or that tourist art is a compromised form of expression. ""Art as Politics"" promises to be a favorite with students and scholars of anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, ethnic relations, art, and Asian studies.

The Royal Chicano Air Force produced major works of visual art, poetry, prose, music, and performance during the second half of the twentieth century and first decades of the twenty-first. Materializing in Sacramento, California, in 1969 and established between 1970 and 1972, the RCAF helped redefine the meaning of artistic production and artwork to include community engagement projects such as breakfast programs, community art classes, and political and labor activism. The collective's work has contributed significantly both to Chicano/a civil rights activism and to Chicano/a art history, literature, and culture. Blending RCAF members' biographies and accounts of their artistic production with art historical, cultural, and literary scholarship, Flying under the Radar with the Royal Chicano Air Force is the first in-depth study of this vanguard Chicano/a arts collective and activist group. Ella Maria Diaz investigates how the RCAF questioned and countered conventions of Western art, from the canon taught in US institutions to Mexican national art history, while advancing a Chicano/a historical consciousness in the cultural borderlands. In particular, she demonstrates how women significantly contributed to the collective's output, navigating and challenging the overarching patriarchal cultural norms of the Chicano Movement and their manifestations in the RCAF. Diaz also shows how the RCAF's verbal and visual architecture-a literal and figurative construction of Chicano/a signs, symbols, and texts-established the groundwork for numerous theoretical interventions made by key scholars in the 1990s and the twenty-first century.

These 50 interesting and entertaining projects are designed to teach beginners the basic skills of the Maori craft of plaiting.Fun with Flax shows how to make items ranging from a simple windmill, a dart and a whistle to more complex puzzles, balls, birds, fish and even a caterpillar. Each project is described one step at a time with easy-to-follow line drawings and instructions. All are fun and will delight children and adults with their ingenuity, their beauty and the amusement they provide. This book is ideal for kohanga reo, playcentres, kindergartens, Maori crafts groups and New Zealand homes. It aims not only to teach the skills of plaiting to young New Zealanders but also to nurture a new generation of flaxworkers. Mick Pendergrast first became interested in plaiting and other Maori crafts while teaching in small communities in the East Cape area. He has spent time as a VSA teacher in the Solomon Islands and on the remote Polynesian outlier of Tikopia, and has worked in a number of New Zealand's major museums. He is the author of Te Mahi Kete- Maori Basketry for Beginners, Feathers and Fibre, a catalogue of the first major exhibition of Maori flaxcrafts, of which he was the curator, and Raranga Whakairo, a collection of plaiting patterns.