This pioneering history examines the major themes and accomplishments in African art from the past fifty years, achieving an impressive balance between the critical reexamination of frequently discussed artists, groups and workshops and the introduction of less publicized or more recent material. Postcolonial art in Africa has built seamlessly upon already existing structures in which the older, precolonial and colonial genres of African art were made. It is in this sense, and in the habits and attitudes of artists towards making art, rather than in any adherence to a particular style, medium, technique, or thematic range, that the art is recognizably "African." Beginning in the early 1950s, the transformations in patronage, training and literacy brought about the birth of new genres which have been propelled onto a world stage.

Preface
1. New Genres: Inventing African Popular Culture
2. Transforming the Workshop
3. Patrons and Mediators
4. Art and Commodity
5. The African Artist: Shifting Identities in the Postcolonial World
6. The Idea of a National Culture: Decolonizing African Art
7. Migration and Displacement