Africa : arts and cultures

The collections of the British Museum provide an exceptional resource for exploring both African antiquity and its contemporary arts and cultures.

This book looks at the continent as a whole. It describes through a series of essays the history and arts of particular regions and the sources of the collections now in the Museum.

Each section will be well-illustrated with a mix of archival and contemporary field photographs, and will also integrate illustrations of up to 50 important individual objects from this world-famous collection.

The objects will have a commentary on their significance by leading figures in the field of African studies, many of them native to the areas from which the objects derive.

The book brings to bear a mix of Western and African scholarship in an innovative collaboration to reassess one of the great African collections.