Under Different Moons: African Art in Conversations shares - for the first time in print - the Museum of Anthropology at UBC's extensive African collections. Featuring more than 250 stunning images of masks, puppets, figurative sculpture, textiles and paintings, the book establishes a dialogue between different aspects and ways of interpreting the continent's rich and diverse art forms. 

The first part of the book, by Anthony Alan Shelton, provides an introduction to African "traditional" visual cultures and describes the philosophical and political ideas behind their uses and significances. In the second part. Titilope Salami focuses on contemporary Nigerian and diasporic artists to show the continued relevance of ritual practices in Nigerian artworks. And in the third, Nuno Porto examines specific items in MOA's collection to reveal the social, historical and market networks in which they once circulated and the changing significances ascribed them. Under Different Moons aims to encourage the wider use of collections as teaching and community resources, and to instigate a conversation - among makers, thinkers and collectors from both sides of the equator - on the histories and interpretations of these invaluable objects. A companion to the 2021 MOA exhibition Sankofa.

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Under Different Moons is part of a wider attempt to bring to public attention, especially that of African and diasporic Canadian communities, parts of an important cultural legacy, safeguarded in museums across the country, that can help empower new sectors and generations of citizens and widen the breadth and understanding of Canada’s multi- and intercultural character.

• Published 2021
• Hardcover, 236 pages