Art writing

This essay offers a new reading of John Ruskin’s pairing of Giorgione and J.M.W. Turner in ‘The Two Boyhoods,’ perhaps the most famous chapter of Modern Painters, volume 5 (1860). Ruskin’s text set out an influential account of how artists come to be shaped by their social and material environments. Critics have tended to focus, understandably, on Ruskin’s vivid account of Turner’s formation within the dirt, misery, and deathliness of modern English life. But what happens if we also take Giorgione’s presence here more seriously, and not simply as a rhetorical foil? What re-articulations of artistic vision and environmental receptivity might come into view? The linking of Turner to Giorgione takes place within a long non-isomorphic sequence of doublings that structures the last section of Modern Painters – ‘Dürer and Salvator’, ‘Claude and Poussin’, ‘Rubens and Cuyp’, ‘Wouvermans and Angelico’. They conform neither to the parameters of a Pugin-style ‘contrast’ nor a programmatic historical-stylistic comparison. Rather, following William Empson’s understanding of the ‘double plot’ of ‘pastoral’ thought, the essay explores Ruskin’s experimentation with more speculative forms of correlation, and with the writing of emphatically non-progressive forms of art history. In doing so, it hopes to suggest the lineaments of another kind of art history within the critic’s text, as it begins to surface in his binocular vision of historical worlds.

Exhibiting for Multiple Senses looks into artistic and curatorial research practices that emphasize the multisensory character of the human body in the encounter with artworks. For some time now, numerous contemporary artists and curators have moved beyond the primacy of the visual in the experience of art exhibitions. The book discusses this shift by bringing together experimental exhibition-making, curatorial theory, art, design, and museum research, disability theory and activism. Its intent is to demonstrate resonances between, on the one hand, curatorial theory and practice and, on the other, disability and crip art activism. While the latter is still often regarded as relevant for only small portions of visibly disabled people, in recent years neurodiversity and invisible disabilities have proven to be relevant for the sensory experiences of much larger parts of exhibition audiences.

Exhibiting for Multiple Senses shares famous and lesser-known examples of experimental exhibitions as well as of artistic practices linked to exhibitions. By mobilizing the senses of touch, smell, taste, and hearing, as well as applications of multimodal technologies and insights from neuroscience, these examples all explore abilities and possibilities of the complex and diverse sensory apparatus that is the human body.

Dóra Hegyi: When and how did you start thinking about public space? Why did you think, already at the beginning of your career, that art has a place beyond studios and exhibition spaces? János Sugár: I studied at the Sculpture Department of the Hungarian Art Academy, and it was

Published originaly:
Tagzine (2025): https://tagzine.net/discotec-case-vienn
Artleaks: https://art-leaks.org

This reflective case study examines a real incident of curatorial misattribution and exclusion from a publicly funded art program in Vienna (Discotec / Mud Boys 2025), framing the event as emblematic of broader structural issues within contemporary cultural labor. Rather than focusing on legal redress, the text positions the case as a lens through which to analyze informal labor dynamics, symbolic authorship, and the ethical fragility of curatorial recognition within independent art infrastructures. Drawing from personal documentation and public funding discrepancies, the article critically interrogates attribution protocols and highlights the need for transparent and equitable practices in collaborative cultural production.

⸻
Tags / Keywords:
• Curatorial ethics
• Informal labor
• Authorship and attribution
• Independent art scene
• Cultural policy
• Precarity in the arts
• Public funding
• Misattribution
• Cultural institutions
• Artistic collaboration
• Vienna art scene
• Curatorial labor
• Symbolic exclusion
• Ethics of recognition
• Art and infrastructure
• Critical curating
• Tagzine
• Discotec 2025
• Cultural labor rights

This article examines the critical contribution of affect and subjectivity in writing about art. Adopting an autotheoretical approach, my investigation of three photographic works by Dora Maar, Père Ubu, 29 rue d’Astorg, and Les années vous guettent, revisits different biographical, historiographical, and literary perspectives to deconstruct the discourse on her work, among others in narratives such as Brigitte Benkemoun’s Je suis le carnet de Dora Maar and Zoé Valdés’s La femme qui pleure. I propose to think of the intersection between eco-criticism and depression as generating a renewal of the gaze, in terms of both art and self-perception, notably through the critical contributions of Ann Cvetkovich’s work and feminist situated knowledges. Through this generic hybridization, we understand the importance of the cultural history of depression in restorative creative practice.

This article traces connections between reviews of Spanish art in Britain between the 18 th and the 21 st centuries and the public prejudices that seem to have remained constant. Beginning with the famous London exhibition of 2009, The Sacred Made Real, the article addresses the origins of the language of reviewers, from the late 17 th century to the Age of Enlightenment; to 19 th-century debates about Catholic art, and the dislike of waxworks, effigies, and polychrome sculpture. Reviews and critical writings about Spain and its art are often linked by the same exaggerated rhetorical hyperbole with regard to the raw realism of some Roman Catholic imagery from the 16 th century onward. Attempts to promote the art in Britain have met with unexpected results. The growing popularity of Spanish artists such as Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Salvador Dali exercised a long artistic influence in the 20 th century. This article suggests that the "enemies" of Spanish art did as much to promote the artistic value of Spain as did its admirers. Reactions and criticisms to Spanish art from the British, which spawned hostility or indifference among Protestant writers, from John Ruskin to Philip Hamerton, were also to create a whole new creative endeavor at the end of the 20 th century. Anger, anxiety, and transgression became new artistic promptings and it is here that links to British Surrealism appear. The figure of an artist from the past as a purveyor of horror, whose work summoned up associations with death, deformity, and violence, came to characterize the art shown at the 2009 exhibition in 21 st-century London. Works of such importance and influence were also to become unclassifiable but were also broached as a source of new artistic inspiration.

The article oscillates between fiction and reflective-academic writing concerning the dispersal of identity between three people and two visual artworks. Two drawings are seen to occupy the same studio, one of which is presented as the author’s, who is also the in-text referenced artist, and the other as the work of a fictional protagonist called Morry. The article concerns a discussion between the artist, Morry, and another fictional protagonist that wavers between belief and disbelief concerning how a drawing practice may involve both the formatting and articulation of ideas of the subject. The author references the Lacanian formation of identity during early infant development, Lacan’s idea of the psychical gaze, and Paul Ricoeur’s idea of narrative identity through an explanation of one of the two drawings, Self & Other. The narrative provides a means of discussing the underlying motivation of both drawings. The question of the narrative’s believability is endorsed by a quote from Musil’s The Man Without Qualities in which a certain decline of human identity is replaced by the essay form.

To cite as: Croft, M. 2025, “(Un)Believable Discussion: A Hybrid Narrative of Three People Interacting in a Space between Two Adjacently-Placed Drawings,” PsyArt 29.2, pp. 44-66.

Article available here:
https://psyart.org/unbelievable-discussion-a-hybrid-narrative-of-three-people-interacting-in-a-space-between-two-adjacently-placed-drawings/

This thesis is a process of writing characters using a cyclical methodology to turn the writer into a reader of their own work, then back into a writer again. The components of this thesis both practice and propose writing as research and develop a concept of character that is ‘relational’. Taking Donald Barthelme’s assertion, ‘Writing is a process of dealing with not-knowing, a forcing of what and how,’ this thesis is attentive to the uncertainty of process: a process that has accreted knowledge in the form of characters and methods. Building on Adam Phillips assertion, ‘Being misrepresented is simply being presented with a version of ourselves – an invention – that we cannot agree with. But we are daunted by other people making us up, by the number of people we seem to be,’ this thesis starts from the premise that in the everyday we make each other up and then goes on to use the form of the character study to explore unresolvable tensions around this process. Building four paralle...

本論探討了在 1980 年代，藝術家團體「新文人畫」出現的原因以及「文人畫」 傳統對於中國當代藝術的意義。在 80 年代末，展現「中國性」的藝術表現成為獲 得官方認可的重要條件。作為「中國繪畫史」和「國畫」的核心⸺「文人畫」代 表著充滿「中國性」的美術「傳統」，從 1989 年開始成為保護中國當代藝術的美 術概念。而「新文人畫」以繼承傳統為說辭，同時內含了突破傳統的創新與現代性， 擁有兩面性。美術評論界對「新文人畫」的讚賞與批評，這些看似矛盾而截然相反 的討論出現的原因是「新文人畫」同時包含了承襲「文人畫」傳統的立場和想要自 由表達世俗快樂、漠不關心、玩世等現代個人意識的多重含義。在 90 年代，「新 文人畫」成為「玩世現實主義」的部分思想基礎，並與後者共享了創作內涵。隨著 中國當代藝術市場的確立與成熟，「玩世現實主義」獲得海內外美術評論家的認可。 這也標誌著內含現代主義、當代藝術種子的「新文人畫」完成使命並退場。
This article explores why the New Literati Painting artist group emerged in the 1980s and the significance of the literati painting (Wenrenhua) tradition for contemporary China. Amidst the turmoil of the late '80s, artistic expressions showcasing "Chineseness" became a crucial condition for official recognition by authorities. As the core of Chinese painting history and Guohua (Chinese style painting), literati painting represents an art tradition imbued with "Chineseness." From 1989, it became a key concept in the protection of contemporary Chinese art. Yet the New Literati Painting group, while positioning themselves as inheritors of this tradition, also oversaw breakthroughs in innovation and modernity, wielding a dual stance. Art critics both praised and criticized the group, their seemingly contradictory positions arising from its numerous functions as inheritors of the literati painting tradition and desire to freely express modern individualized ideas of secular joy, indifference, and cynicism. In the 1990s, New Literati Painting integrated into the ideological foundations of "cynical realism" and came to share its creative undertones. With the establishment and maturation of China's contemporary art market, cynical realism gained domestic and international recognition from art critics. This also marked the completion of the mission of New Literati Painting and its seeds of modernism and contemporary art, as well as its exit from the scene.

A hataIl®mn kulitiltrkfi a a mnifitflt for°t3ks6ge? A tanulmány több szervezet kultúrájával kapcsolatos nagyobb kutatás egy részlete, egy önállóan is értelmezhető vállalati esetpélda. A magyar szervezetek örökségeként leírt hatalmi kultúra továbbélését, sőt fokozódását találtuk egy nagy állami közszolgáltató szervezetnél. Vizsgálataink során természetesen tisztában vagyunk a vállalati kultúra vizsgálhatóságának korlátaival. Kérdőíves és interjús módszerrel gyűjtöttük össze és elemeztük a szervezeti tagok véleményét a kultúra főbb dimenziói mentén.

Metin Çelik yerleştirme, eskiz ve kara kalem çalışmalarından oluşan sergisi Post-Apocalyptıc'te (Kıyamet Sonrası) ile bizleri savaşın, yıkımın ve şiddetin izleyicisi değil tanığı olmaya davet ediyor. 15. İstanbul Bienali'nin komşu etkinliği olan sergi , "İyi bir komşu nasıl olmalı?" sorusuna da cevap veriyor: "Evet, iyi bir komşu olmanın yolu yanı başında yaşanan şiddete, savaşa ve yıkıma duyarsız kalmamaktan geçiyor."

In honour of the Journal’s tenth birthday, we asked a collection of authors with huge and varied experience of the cultural sector to think about the last decade and pick one thing that stands out for them. The brief was open and included books, exhibitions, digital innovation and general trends. The only restriction was that the contributions were short and were accompanied by a single image.

There is something very special about rising before daybreak and witnessing the dawn of a new cycle of celestial time as we know it on the planet Earth. The beginning of a new day rarely disappoints those folks who are disciplined enough to rise and witness the occasion. To be fair, it may also be a behavior bordering on stubborn willpower coupled with a bit of insomnia, a propensity to enjoy physical discomfort, a measure of self-inflicted pain, and old age thrown in for good measure. Daybreak, sunrise, evening dusk, and sunset are the periods of our day when the everyday miracles of the planet are on full display. To those who are astutely aware of their full senses of sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste; the continuous activity of the natural environment performs as a well-disciplined ensemble of events that enrich one’s appreciation for the gift of just being alive to witness it all.

RELEVANCE OF ROLE AFRTIST INTERVIEWS - 1

In my newsletter from July 2014, I referenced the Nobel Prize
winning author NADINE GORDIMER, who had just passed away
in May, aged 90. As doyen of South African literature and
creative writing, with a great number of novels and other
salient fiction to her name, she had been part of my original
series of artist talks from 1986/87. Which today forms the
ground-work of ANTOA, my socially motivated Theory of the
Arts.

RELEVANCE OF MY ARTS TALKS - 2

My contribution to transformation in South Africa is not so short,     
not so sweet and long overdue. Yet as a book nearly caught in
a deadly mill it remains palatable today.

It a) brought me straight into the heart of the cultural resistance,                 
b) revised anthropological research topics, and
c) laid the basis to formulate a new Theory of Art and
Creative Expression!     
                                                                                                             
I looked at ARTS and CULTURE in terms of comparative social         
analysis, and framed my questions on individual issues as                   
much as on collective and political standards.

Role of Artist in Society, 24 talks from South Africa,
by RGW11c

Penumbra was published to coincide with a large solo exhibition of the paintings of British painter Danial Pulman. The exhibition took place at CHINI Gallery, Taiwan, in December 2024. This book was published by CHINI, with contributions from Fang-Wei Chang, Tom Palin, Robin Peckham and Daniel Pulman. In this chapter, Pulman discussed his works, approach, and thinking in conversation with Palin.

Ord&Bild 3-4 2024 VATTEN
Översättning: Johannes Björk
https://www.tidskriftenordobild.se/ordoblogg/category/ordampbild-3-4-2024-vatten

How can we consider the ocean as a single body of water, moving over and beyond nationalistic, militaristic and colonial lines? How can we think with ocean water, and how can we find ourselves in companionship with the water and the non-human agents who exist there? This essay pursues these
questions and relates to the work of Swedish-based artists Ingela Ihrman and Signe Johannessen. In these eco-visionary artists’ work, we witness a watery relationality with kelp, as a way into the world of thinking with our aqueous neighbours.

This book is a portrait of the period when modern art became contemporary
art. It explores how and why writers and artists in Australia argued over the
idea of a distinctively Australian modern and then postmodern art from 1962,
the date of publication of a foundational book, Australian Painting 1788–
1960, up to 1988, the year of the Australian Bicentennial.
Across nine chapters about art, exhibitions, curators and critics, this
book describes the shift from modern art to contemporary art through the
successive attempts to define a place in the world for Australian art. But by
1988, Australian art looked less and less like a viable tradition inside which
to interpret ‘our’ art. Instead, vast gaps appeared, since mostly male and
often older White writers had limited their horizons to White Australia alone.
National stories by White men, like borders, had less and less explanatory value. Underneath this, a perplexing subject remained: the absence of Aboriginal art in understanding what Australian art was during the period that established the idea of a distinctive Australian modern and then contemporary art.

This book reflects on why the embrace of Aboriginal art was so late in art
museums and histories of Australian art, arguing that this was because it was not part of a national story dominated by colonial, then neo‑colonial dependency. It is important reading for all scholars of both global and Australian art, and for curators and artists.

The disconnect from the physics of the world, something Denes’ art recognizes and confronts tends to works against nature and seen cumulatively against civilization. Nature, like humanity, has a memory. Nature designs effortlessly, and at no excess. Resource use is simply a cyclical life system. So many urban art projects involving nature are decorative and quite beautiful, but they do not encourage a sense of our links to nature and art has a firm footing in the philosophical and poetic intransigence of humanity—its blind spot being the way capital as an abstract concept transgresses earth value.

Resumo Haveria mudanças de linguagem e representação que se tornaram possíveis devido ao uso de câmeras e estruturas de produção digital, particularmente no campo videoarte? Provocado por essa questão inicial, um grupo de realizadores e pesquisadores em artemídia realizou uma discussão via internet, buscando identificar tendências da produção videográfica contemporânea. O debate resultou no (hiper)texto que se segue, coletivo e aberto, articulado em camadas. Palavras-chave vídeo, tecnologias digitais, novas poéticas Abstract Does the use of cameras and of digital production structures make it possible changes in language and visual representation? On being challenged by this question, a group of promoters and researchers in artmidia started a debate via an internet chat, aiming at identifying tendencies in contemporary videographic production. This article is the outcome of such a debate, in the shape of a collective and open hipertext, articulated in many discursive layers.

The article proposes a possible reading on the issue of contemporary Opera. The scenic nature of theatrical text, the complex relationship between word, music and action, the relationship between typology and scenography are some of the themes dealt with. In relation to them, the reader offers a possible theoretical and methodological approach that traces, in the practice of assembling fragments, the principle of the project. It is exemplified by the example of an experiment in progress, conducted by Clara Fiorillo, about the staging of the fairy tale Hänsel und Gretel (Engelbert Humperdinck's music and Adelheid Wette's booklet), that is proposed, in this study, as a possible representative model.

The purpose of this study was to conduct a comprehensive and critical review of the book 'African Visual Art from an Art Historical Perspective' authored by Monni Adams published in 1989. The book is focused on the study of artworks from Sub-Saharan indigenous societies based on the perspectives of Art Historians in the United States. The book has been an indispensable teaching and research resource for practitioners, teachers, researchers, and students of art history as well as all those who are interested in acquiring in-depth knowledge in the history of the visual arts of the African continent, especially sub-Sahara Africa. However, 35 years after it was written, there has not been any academic rigorous review of the book although it is still used as a theoretical bedrock in the African art history discipline. Hence, this critical and comprehensive review of the book scholarly discusses the context of the book within its scope of African visual art history while intelligently appraising and critiquing its contents and/or arguments while shedding light on its strengths and weaknesses.

This book review was aimed at review the arguments and views of the scholars of art, and review the discrepancies between art history and art critics and to expose the shortfalls behind art criticism through the work of James Elkins, who is an art historian and an art critic. James Elkins' work was a piece of work that boasts scholarly morale on discourse, to buttress the efficacy of judgment in criticism, especially in the area of art history. The topic titled ''the absence of judgment in art criticism" was extracted from a book edited by James Elkins and Michael Newman in 2004. The research work titled "the absence of judgment in art criticism" discusses the proposition and logical stance of contemporary art criticism that failed to record trained individuals in the area of art criticism and not exhibition catalog and essay writing by art historians and philosophers, which were seen as a sham as it was given mere publicity about description of artworks. The second part of this review focused to differentiate how the seven types of criticism metamorphosed from the philosophy of art to journalistic criticism, as characterized by Arielia Budick and others. However, James Elkins's criticism precisely dealt with three subtitles namely art criticism: writing without readers, how unified is art criticism and seven unworkable cures as to prove his argument.

Visual essays have been gaining more and more space in academic journals and even in commercial magazines. This essay seeks to bring some of the historical context of visual essays in the field of artist publications, with
emphasis on Brazilian magazines published from the 1970s onwards. Some selected samples were used to reflect on the visual essay as structure.
This analysis can help in establishing a criteria for evaluating visual essays, so that one day they are recognized as intellectual production worth the same as an academic article.

Als Beuteländer für postkoloniale Schürfrechte oder Rodungsfläche für Palmöl-Plantagen waren sie das bereits. Nun, mit drei Prozentpunkten mehr Wachstum als die Weltwirtschaft, keimt eine neue, moderne Identität. Zeitgenössische Kunst liefert die Projektionsflächen für dieses neue Selbstbild.

This book review was aimed at review the arguments and
views of the scholars of art, and review the discrepancies between art history and art critics and to expose the shortfalls behind art criticism through the work of James Eikins, who is an art historian and an art critic. James Elkins' work was a piece of work that boasts scholarly morale on discourse, to buttress the efficacy of judgement in criticism, especially in the area of art history. The topic titled ''the absence of judgement in art criticism" was extracted from a book edited by James Elkins and Michael Newman in 2004. The research work titled "The Absence of Judgement in Art Criticism" discusses the proposition and logical stance of contemporary art criticism that failed to record trained individuals in the area of art criticism and not exhibition catalog and essay writing by art historians and philosophers, which were seen as a sham as it was given mere publicity about description of artworks. The second part of this review focused to differentiate how the seven types of criticism
metamorphosed from the philosophy of art to journalistic criticism, as characterized by Arielia Budick and others. However, James Elkins's criticism precisely dealt with three subtitles namely art criticism: writing
without readers, how unified is art criticism and seven unworkable cures as to prove his argument.

In this essay I explore how to increase and emphasise the value of student learning from and through each other, as peers. Encouraging students to learn from each other (rather than expecting all to come from the 'teacher at the front') means the learning can continue to take place in the café / pub / club / home long after the class is over. When effectively done, such active student participation puts whatever is being taught and learned into the mouths and vocabulary and practices of the students, which makes it more portable and transmittable to other contexts and situations. What this portability in turn can bring back to the classroom will be beyond anything that one tutor could offer. I see this as learning in 3D-where a topic or methodology can be explored and reflected back from 15 different perspectives (or however many students are in the class.) As an artist, photographer and educator, as well as a student myself, I am interested in how incredibly differently we each experience and see things. When managed correctly, these differences should be of benefit to a class. But this depends on there being enough trust in the classroom for students to feel free and safe enough to express what they need-which is often much easier said or hoped for than done. In my last essay, inspired by the writings of bell hooks, in which she reflects upon her own education from elementary to graduate school, I came up with the idea of a 'safe-danger zone' as an optimal space within which the learning and teaching can take place. Safe, because students feel brave enough to put their ideas forward, and dangerous because, as hooks described, coming across new ideas and theories can feel dangerous: new ideas have the power to unsettle previously held assumptions that can radically shift a sense of self and of society at large. This short paper, written as part of my PG Cert at Goldsmiths in 2022, balances my (utopic?) desire for everyone to feel equally heard and understood (which would create the best environment for effective peer-learning), with some reality checks regarding inequality in the classroom. The methodologies I focus on are small group working (offering, in the words of Mills and Alexander, 'Flexibility, Interaction, Reflexivity and Engagement' 2) and anonymous collaborative writing.

Pendidikan akhlak menjadi tunjang dalam pendidikan Islam. Kemajuan sesebuah negara akan terarah dan dirahmati jika ia dibangunkan oleh para saintis dan ilmuan yang memiliki ilmu dan penghayatan akhlak. Kertaskerja ini cuba melihat sejauhmana sistem pendidikan di Malaysia memberi keutamaan kepada pembinaan akhlak di samping melahirkan insan yang berilmu dan berpengetahuan. Dibincangkan juga kurikulum pendidikan akhlak yang disediakan oleh Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia sejak sekolah rendah sehingga ke sekolah menengah. Turut dibincangkan berkaitan isu pendidikan akhlak dan sains yang berlaku dalam sistem pendidikan di Malaysia.

Excerpted from the exhibition catalog for the MFA Graduation Show 2024 of the Royal Institute of Art Stockholm, showcasing images of solo exhibitions and individual artworks, alongside texts written by the students, reflecting on their practice and how it was shaped during their time at the RIA.

The local community network of Holwerd has launched an ambitious idea to create an opening in the sea dyke to bring the sea back to Holwerd. This measure is necessary to make Holwerd more attractive for tourists and reverse the economic decline of the northeast Friesland region. This paper shows the opportunities for redesigning Holwerd-on-Sea in a more sustainable way. The plan integrates spatial, natural and economic cycles in a climate-proof design proposal. The approach is based on building with nature and economic value creation. The plan increases the livability of Holwerd, turning the downward spiral into an upward spiral. Holwerd adapts to trends as climate change and salt water intrusion, by changing the current freshwater cultivations into salt water cultivations. To reverse the downward ecologic cycle within the region new nature is created and the salt marshes will be excavated. To create more economic values in the region, this new nature is open for tourists and introducing a fairway for recreational ships to the Wadden Sea. The tidal basin that is created by breaching the sea dike will flush the fairway clean and store energy using a reversed hydro storage plant.

Abstract
The article examines gender discrimination faced by women artists in the cultural and creative sectors, focusing particularly on their expectations and the dynamic relationship between entrepreneurship and their artistic endeavours. While certain disadvantages, such as lower wages, underrepresentation, work-family conflict, and symbolic devaluation, are prevalent in various industries, there are additional challenges specific to the creative sector. This study assesses the current situation for female artists by analyzing data from the last two years, focusing particularly on the post-COVID era. Based on research on gender studies in the art world, the ideal artist is often expected to frequently imitate male role models. First, men are perceived as creative geniuses. Secondly, social prejudices have always favoured men over women when it comes to aesthetic and art matters. Finally, the nature of artistic careers requires behaviours that are more socially acceptable for men, such as entrepreneurial skills and self-promotion. This article aims to provide a comprehensive and clear overview of the current state of the art world and the art market, with a focus on the position of female artists.
Keywords
Female artists, Equality, Gender, Arts, Art Market,

The purpose of this study was to conduct a comprehensive and critical review of the book 'African Visual Art from an Art Historical Perspective' authored by Monni Adams published in 1989. The book is focused on the study of artworks from Sub-Saharan indigenous societies based on the perspectives of Art Historians in the United States. The book has been an indispensable teaching and research resource for practitioners, teachers, researchers, and students of art history as well as all those who are interested in acquiring in-depth knowledge in the history of the visual arts of the African continent, especially sub-Sahara Africa. However, 35 years after it was written, there has not been any academic rigorous review of the book although it is still used as a theoretical bedrock in the African art history discipline. Hence, this critical and comprehensive review of the book scholarly discusses the context of the book within its scope of African visual art history while intelligently appraising and critiquing its contents and/or arguments while shedding light on its strengths and weaknesses.

The study rooted in the eco-innovation theory aimed at investigating the effects of plastic waste in the Kokrobite and Bortianor communities in Accra while finding proactive ways of using recycled art from plastic waste, with post-use packages in focus to sensitize community members on the negative effects of plastic waste. Phenomenology and art studio-based research designs under the qualitative approach were adopted for the study. The study was carried out from August 2021 to July 2022. Personal interviews and focus group discussions with 72 snowball and purposively sampled study participants. The data from the study were analysed using the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The study revealed that the improper management of post-used plastic items in the study areas was a major factor that contributed to environmental pollution. An artistic installation was executed using plastic waste. Visually, it enhanced the environmental aesthetics in the community while philosophically serving as a sensitization tool on the effects of plastic waste. In the quest for a solution to plastic pollution, innovation from post-used plastic items is the ultimate answer. The Ministry of Education and Ghana Education Service in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment Science Technology and Innovation and the Ministry of Tourism Arts and Culture can organize such competitions to reward students of all levels who create innovative products from plastic waste.

African artists from different ethnic societies have contributed massively to global art history. However, sadly, there has been scanty scholarly documentation of their journey as well as their works. One of such great artists is Godfried Donkor, a British-Ghanaian mixed-media artist. The paper delves into his personal life, educational background, his journey as an artist, and his accomplishments in the development of art in the global and Ghanaian contexts. The paper analyzes two of his works using Erwin Panofsky's procedure of iconography in art historical writing. The findings of the study revealed that it was difficult in drawing a clear line between modernism and contemporary as far as Donkor's artistic creations are concerned. Donkor's works can be considered as a merger of modernist and contemporary art movements. He uses a contemporary artistic approach to communicate/highlights issues of the period of the African diasporic modernism movement especially, the themes that revolve around colonialism and its impacts, racial discrimination/oppression, their legacy, and Afrocentric identities. This was the period when the Africans in the diaspora, especially in the United States and Europe were struggling for a breakthrough to showcase their art and culture to the world. These concepts have been the primacy of Donkor's creative expressions. The study contends that Ghanaian artists, both locally and internationally are advancing in their careers and need to be documented as a step in promoting the artists and the arts of the country on the global art landscape.

Museums are in a particularly salient period of a paradigm shift, becoming more socially responsive and considering audience engagement in terms of inclusion and diversity rather than simply numbers of visitors (Kletchka, 2018). For example, in the exhibition Life Beyond the Label, the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery exhibited audio responses by artists with disabilities and community members who made connections between their experiences with disability and the works of art. These audio responses were exhibited alongside the more traditional art historical descriptions written by curators (Sandell, 2019). Museum theorist Richard Sandell contends that museums have an ethical obligation to not only include and represent people with disabilitiesFootnote2 as part of their public practice; they must move from mere accommodation to action for social justice (Sandell, 2002, 2011, 2019). Even with a shift toward broader inclusion and community engagement, museums still struggle to include people with disabilities in nearly every realm of audience engagement, programming, and representation in museum collections and exhibitions (Kudlick & Luby, 2019; Sandell, 2019).

This article examines two projects by Jonathan Jones, an Australian artist of Wiradjuri/ Kamilaroi descent. The first addresses a series of works that honour William Barak, an artist and freedom fighter from the Coranderrk region of outer Melbourne, Victoria. Barak's tenacity in challenging the colonial authorities is inadvertently matched by Jones, whose projects on the theme commenced in 2010 and are ongoing. The second project, barrangal dyara (skin and bones), was the 32nd John Kaldor Public Art Project, a temporary installation in Sydney's Royal Botanic Garden in 2016. Jones chose the site where the Garden Palace had been erected for the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition. When the building burnt down in 1882, a collection of art and weapons from southeast Australia was lost. While the Garden Palace had positioned Western culture as triumphalist and Aboriginal culture as primitive and doomed, Jones recast the exhibition's legacy to critique cultural exchange over time, and to showcase Aboriginal cultural revival in the southeast. Grand in vision and subtle in realisation, his project included symposia, the installation of 15 000 gypsum shields, recorded language and kangaroo grasses, a smoking (cleansing) ceremony, song, and dance. This article situates Jones's work within a broader field that critiques mainstream history and its familiar tropes of monuments and memorials. It argues that historians and artists have led the way in foregrounding new perspectives on Aboriginal history and ways of being. Finally, the author argues that Jones's multi-sensory strategies invite comparison with intangible heritage, a concept largely overlooked by art historians.