Prof John Mack
| Job Title | Contact | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Professor of World Art Studies |
John dot Mack at uea dot ac dot uk
Tel: 2463/2817 |
Sainsbury Centre 0.16 |
Biography
Professor Mack is starting a new book project looking at the relationship between art in death in sub-Saharan Africa. Recent work has included a number of essays which explore drawing and pattern-making and in particular the assumptions which have underscored and in some cases misrepresented the processes involved when regarded in a cross-cultural context. He is also working on aspects of modernity in relation to spirit possession especially in eastern Africa which will be the subject of a lecture at the British Academy in the late autumn 2012. This incorporates aspects of work undertaken with colleagues in northern Kenya as part of an AHRC project where he was the principle investigator.
Career
Professor Mack is currently Chairman of UEA’s Sainsbury Institute for Art and has recently come to the end of his term of office as President of British Institute in Eastern Africa. Before joining UEA in 2004 Professor Mack was Keeper of the British Museum’s Department of Ethnography (Museum of Mankind), which he joined in 1976, and was also Senior Keeper of the British Museum as a whole. Although his responsibilities involved coordinating research and curatorial activities across a wide field, his specialism has been in Africa and the western Indian Ocean. He remains an advisor for the British Museum’s International African Programmes and is a recent President of the British Institute in Eastern Africa (sponsored by the British Academy). He has overseen a number of major exhibitions and gallery installations, including ‘Museum of the Mind, Art and Memory in World Cultures’ (British Museum, 2003) and The Sainsbury Africa Galleries, which opened at the British Museum in 2001.
He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2009.
Academic Background
B.A. Social Anthropology; University of Sussex (1971)
M.A. History of Ideas; University of Sussex (1972)
D.Phil, Anthropology; Oxford University (1975)
Website
Key Research Interests
African art and cultures
Museums, memory, cultural heritage
Art in a cross-cultural context
Art and the environment
Current Research Projects
Following research leave in spring 2012 outstanding research projects have been completed and are either published or in press. Two new projects are in development. The first is a book on the association of artistic practice with death in different African communities. This draws on themes which have been explored in seminars and lectures and is intended to be a book which will be of use to graduate and postgraduate students. Its contents include conceptions of death and ancestorhood; funerals, coffins and shrouds; masquerade and performance; shrines; cenotaphs and memorials; and contemporary practices. The approach will be both anthropological and art historical and include archaeological, ethnographic and contemporary examples.
A second project is entitled ‘The Dimensions of Art’. It takes forward ideas incorporated in an earlier book ‘The Art of Small Things’ and expands the theme by looking at art created in miniature, on a human scale and in large format asking what the technical, aesthetic and cultural implications of creating objects at different scales are. Its examples are drawn from the rich collections of the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts at UEA which are in effect used as a laboratory through which to explore the issues which arise. It will focus on individual objects, artists and artist biographies.
Forthcoming publications:
Mack, John (December 2012) Making and Seeing: Matisse and the understanding of Kuba pattern Journal of Art Historiography, December 1-19.
Mack, John (2013) Baskets of Wisdom: A Central African trope In Tt. Heslop (ed.) Basketry and Beyond: Constructing Cultures. Brill. (In Press)
Mack, John (2014) Art and Death in sub-Saharan Africa. Reaktion Books
Past Research Projects and Grants
| Project Title | Start Date | End Date | Funding Body |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Land Viewed from the Sea | 1/9/2008 | 31/12/2008 | Leverhulme Trust |
| Belief and Belonging: Identity and Religion in Northern Kenya | 1/10/2007 | 31/1/2009 | Arts and Humanities Research Council |
| Art of Small things | 1/8/2004 | 31/7/2007 | British Museum |
Teaching Interests
- The comparative study of art
- Traditional and contemporary art of Africa
- Museum studies and cultural heritage
- Art and the construction of memory
Research supervision
Interested in supervising research students in all areas of African art and anthropology, and topics related to museums and cultural heritage.
Recent and current PhD students include:
Sarah Worden: Hausa Robes of Honour (2007)Lisa Binder: Contemporary Africa Art (2009)
Fiona Sheales: Early 19th century Ghana (2011)
Laura de Becker: Representations of genocide in Rwanda (2012)
Sokratis Kioussis: Nature and Culture in contemporary Greek museum practice (2012)
Rebekah Shepperd: The Torday expeditions to Congo (1900-1908)
Manuela Huseman: African art in Germany in the early 20th century
Emily Crane: Contemporary artists’ workshops in Africa and India
Vicky van Bockhaven: Leopard man cults in eastern Congo
Kiprop Lagat: Memorialisation after the Nairobi bomb attack
Examples of modules taught
- Concealing and Revealing: Ancestors, Spirits and Kings
- The Practice of Cultural Heritage
- Adjacencies: Comparative approaches to art
- African Art and Archaeology
- Material Worlds
Article
Mack, John (2012) Making and seeing: Matisse and the understanding of Kuba pattern. Journal of Art Historiography, 7. pp. 1-19. ISSN 2042-4752
Mack, John (2012) Drawing Degree zero: The Indigenous encounter with pencil and paper. World Art, 2 (1). pp. 70-105.
Mack, John (2011) Fetish? Magic Figures from Central Africa. Journal of Art Historiography, 5. pp. 1-14.
Mack, John (2011) Healing Words: becoming a spirit-hist in Madagascar. Anthropology and Medicine, 18 (2). pp. 231-243.
Mack, John (2007) The Land Viewed from the Sea. Azania, 62. pp. 1-14.
Mack, John (2002) "Exhibiting Cultures" Revisited: Translation and Representation. FOLK: Journal of the Danish Ethnographic Society, 43. pp. 195-209.
Book Section
Mack, John (2009) The Object of Memory. In: Preserving the cultural heritage of Africa. Crisis or Renaissance? James Curry Boydell and Brewer. ISBN 9781868885398
Mack, John (2004) El Arte de Benin. In: Africa. La Figura Imaginada. Fundacio la Caxia, Barcelona, pp. 26-36. ISBN 8476648510
Mack, John (2003) "Ethnography" in the Enlightenment. In: Enlightening the British: Knowledge, discovery & the museum in the Eighteenth Century. British Museum Press, pp. 114-118. ISBN 071415010X
Mack, John (2003) Medicine and Anthropology in Wellcome's Collection. In: Medicine Man, the Forgotten Museum of Henry Wellcome. British Museum Press, pp. 213-233. ISBN 0714127949
Book
Mack, John (2011) The Sea: A Cultural History. Reaktion Books. ISBN 1861898098
Mack, John (2008) Preserving the Cultural Heritage of Africa: Crisis or Renaissance? James Currey Publications, p. 160. ISBN 0852559828
Mack, John (2007) The Art of Small Things. British Museum Press, p. 219. ISBN 9780714150468
Mack, John (2003) Museum of the Mind, Art and Memory in World Cultures. British Museum Press, p. 160. ISBN 0714126373
Mack, John (2001) Africa: Arts and Cultures. British Museum Press, p. 224. ISBN 0714125482
Professional Activities
- Fellow of the British Academy (2009)
- President of the British Institute in Eastern Africa ( 2005 -2011)
- Member of the British Museum Research Board (2006-2010)
- Member of the Board of Visitors, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (1999-2012)
- Trustee, Horniman Museum (1998-2010)
- Member of the Advisory Board, National Art Collections Fund (1994-2005)
- Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute
- Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
- Fellow of the Saltzburg Global Seminar
Administrative Posts/Responsibilities
- Chairman, The Sainsbury Institute for Art (since 2011)
- Head of School, January 2009 - September 2011
