The pasts and presence of art in South Africa
11 December 2020
A new volume, The Pasts and Presence of Art in South Africa: Technologies, Ontologies and Agents, co-edited by Rachel King (UCL Institute of Archaeology) is now available.
![The pasts and presence of art in South Africa (bookcover) The pasts and presence of art in South Africa (bookcover)](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/sites/archaeology/files/styles/large_image/public/cover_crop_pasts_presence_1oct-800px.jpg?itok=ViSIeTZu)
The open access volume, published recently in the Cambridge McDonald Institute Monograph series and co-edited by Rachel King with Chris Wingfield and John Giblin, establishes a new framework of analysis that transcends that of nineteenth-century colonial power, for engaging with South Africa’s artistic traditions.
The volume is the ultimate result of a conference with the same title, held on 27–29 October 2016 to mark the opening of the British Museum exhibition South Africa: the art of a nation. Through its overtly political choice of topics, the exhibition sought to engage with the entanglements of art in the politics of South Africa’s recent past.