Focuses on the significance of Arts and how to make them economically viable. Also highlights ways and means of making the arts self-supporting and highly competetive. Tables, index, xi, 198pp, NIGERIA. CBACC.

2001 9780320059 Paperback

A presentation of sixty five illustrations of terracotta sculptures from the Nok, Sokoto and Katsina cultures of Nigeria. These objects, dating from 600 BC to 300 AD, are the oldest traces of one of the most remarkable sculptural tradition of sub Saharan Africa. Illustrated in colour. Bib, maps, 122pp, FRANCE. ADAM BIRO, 1999 2876602423 Hardback

A study of Gelede, a popular community festival of masquerade, dance and song, held several times a year by the Yoruba of south-western Nigeria and the Republic of Benin. Covers the cultural history, the performance, the aesthetics of costume and masks, and the moral and aesthetic philosophy against a background of social change. Illustrated in colour. Index, notes, gloss, bib, index, 304pp, USA. WASHINGTON U P.

A survey was conceived as a rescue operation to collect as many photographs and drawings as possible before decorations disappeared altogether, recording vital information about them from compound heads living in decorated houses, and from the master craftsmen who created them. During an introductory stock-taking survey it listed nearly one thousand decorated houses. 360pp, GERMANY. LIT VERLAG.

Many myths surround the Hyena Men who haunt the peripheries of Nigeria's cities. Accompa-nied by hyenas, rock pythons and baboons, they earn a living by performing before crowds and selling traditional medicines. Pieter Hugo's extraordinary portraits of their liminal existence reveal an uncanny world of complex, co-dependent relationships, where familiar distinctions between dominance and submission, wildness and domesticity, tradition and modernity are constantly subverted. Nigerian journalist Adetokunbo Abiola introduces readers to the Hyena Men, explaining the traditions and mystique behind their practices. 35 col photos, 80pp, GERMANY. PRESTEL.

Encompasses over 40 years of scholarly research on African art, both traditional and modern, by anthropologist Simon Ottenberg. Focusing on the arts of the Afikpo, an Igbo group in southeastern Nigeria, the essays discuss art objects in context of their use in performance and ritual and the symbol-ism of aesthetic forms and behaviour. BNS, 500pp, USA. AFRICA WORLD PRESS.

Illustrated study of the lyrical, curvilinear design system called uli that Igbo women have used to decorate their bodies, the walls of homes, and shrines. Explores the ways in which artists' use of uli have been informed by their relationships to Igbo culture, their experiences in the 1967 70 war, their literary interests, and their influences on one another. Col illus, bib, index, 302pp, USA. SMITHSONIAN INSTITUT, 1560988002

1997 Hardback

This comprehensive overview of the art of Africa's ancient Nok civilization presents the oldest known figurative sculptures south of the Sahara. In 1928, in central Nigeria, tin miners uncovered clay shards which, when reconstructed, were found to be fragments of terracotta sculptures. The unique representations of human heads and other figures date from 500 BCE and are attributed to a culture known today as Nok. 140 illustrations, mostly in colour. 160pp, GERMANY. PRESTEL.

Through this volume of collected papers, contemporary Nigerian art is looked at through the work of the artists of the Nsukka school. B/w ill, index, xvii, 330pp. USA. WASHINGTON U P.

Astonishingly creative and aesthetic Nigerian hairstyles, captured by a Nigerian photographer, J.D.'Okhai Ojeikere. Seeing is believing. Large format, b/w plates, 158pp, SWITZERLAND. SCALO.

2000 3908247306 Hardback