REDRESSING A DYSFUNCTIONAL ART HISTORICAL SCHOLARSHIP IN NIGERIA

Abstract

This paper interrogates the methodological foundations of African art historical scholarship in Nigeria, arguing that the field has been shaped by frameworks imported wholesale from anthropology, sociology, and Euro-American art history, resulting in what has been described as "art history without history." Tracing the discipline's institutional development from Kenneth Murray's ethnographic studies of the 1930s–60s through the establishment of postgraduate programmes at Ahmadu Bello University, University of Nigeria Nsukka, University of Ibadan, Delta State University Abraka, and LadokeAkintola University of Technology, the paper demonstrates how foreign analytic schemes—formalism, contextualism, and connoisseurship—have proven inadequate for interpreting African art's conceptual and perceptual codes, cyclic temporal philosophy, and spirit-oriented ontology. Drawing on the author's personal scholarly experience and the intellectual legacy of Professor Cornelius OyelekeAdepegba, the paper proposes an indigenous African art history methodology grounded in oral sources (proverbs, praise poetry, incantations), artist-workshop knowledge, synchronic evidence from allied creative disciplines, and object-centered eyewitness engagement, while cautioning against uncritical reliance on interviews and photographic evidence. It further addresses the politicization of contemporary African art as culturally "corrupted" by foreign influence, countering this view by framing artistic dynamism as an inevitable expression of living culture. The paper concludes by calling for a revitalized professional forum—building on the stalled Art Historian Association of Nigeria—to consolidate indigenous methods, foster scholarly collaboration, and reposition African art historiography within African philosophical, oral, and performative epistemologies rather than borrowed Western paradigms.