Art News

New book by UCSB art historian is the first to catalog indigenous African art owned by an African collector

SANTA BARBARA, CA.- With a new book that formalizes and interprets a collection of indigenous African art owned by an African collector, Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, a professor of history of art and architecture at UC Santa Barbara, is changing the way African art is regarded and valued. In “Making History: African Collectors and the Canon of African Art” (Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2012 distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc.), Ogbechie catalogs the private collection owned by Femi Akinsanya. Located in Lagos, Nigeria, the collection features 740 pieces, including artworks that originated in Yoruba, Igbo, Urhobo, Cross River, Benin, and the Benue River Valley cultures of Nigeria. The book is published in English and French editions. “There is a sense in which the idea of African art seems to be restricted to those African artworks that were taken out of the continent during the colonial