On May 10 and 11, 1985, six scholars of African art presented papers at the third Stanley Conference at the School of Art and Art History. Dozens of students and scholars from both coasts, Europe, and Africa attended and participated actively in the discussion. The theme of the conference was "The Artist and the Workshop in Traditional Africa." The theme was chosen because over the past decade it has become increasingly clear that many of the mechanisms of art production in Africa bear striking resemblances to traditional processes of making art in Europe. The history of medieval, Renaissance, and modern art is full of accounts of workshop systems in which a master artist employed assistants and apprentices who helped with the preparation of materials, with the design and composition of paintings and sculpture, and who sometimes carried out the bulk of the work, with the master artists adding only the final touches. As the body of published works of African art has grown over the past 20 years, scholars specializing in relatively confined geographical areas have succeeded in identifying substantial numbers of objects that are either the work of a single artist, or of a workshop of artists and followers, in which the styles of the followers imitate closely the work of more accomplished artists. The studies of Allen Wardwell and Ezio Bassani have identified a corpus of Bamana works attributed to a large workshop in southeastern Mall. Scholars of the Yoruba have identified workshops and established bodies of work for Bamgboye of Odo-Owa, Arowogun of Osi-Ilorin, the Adeshina family, especially Agbonbiofe of Efon-Alaye, Olowe of Ise-Ekiti, Toibo of Erin, and many others. It is clear that in years to come, increasing numbers of scholars will succeed in identifying the work of individual artists and recording the histories of their careers, so that, like Western art, the labels attached to these objects in museums will include dates and the artist's name.

ABSTRACTS OF CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS

CHRISTOPHER ROY: Introduction

ARNOLD RUBIN: The keynote presentation was by Arnold Rubin of UCLA, whose paper, "Artists and Workshops in Northeastern Nigeria," is included here and focuses on the tendency for the brass casting and other similar industries in northeastern Nigeria to shift away from the more traditional small-scale, artist/client relationship to a more remote relationship that included middlemen and workshops. This shift was the result of the complex casting technology, the use of materials whose availability was limited, and the demand for standardized products.

SIDNEY KASFIR: The participants in the conference at Iowa included Sidney Kasfir, from the Boston University African Studies Center, who spoke on "Apprentices and Entrepreneurs: The Workshop and Style Uniformity in Sub-Saharan Africa." Dr. Kasfir studied the varying degrees of innovation permitted African artists by different apprenticeship and patronage systems. Greatest uniformity of styles and types occurs where formal apprenticeship and conservative patronage reinforced each other. Greatest innovation occurs where there is an informal system of training and a patronage system that tolerates individuality. This was certainly the most broad crosscultural study, citing the Dogon, Senufo, Dan in west Africa, the Tiv, Idoma, Kalabari, and Ebira of eastern and southeastern Nigeria, the Kuba of Zaire and the Makonde of East Africa.

MONICA BLACKMUM VISONÁ: Monica Blackmun Visoná discussed "Divinely Inspired Artists from the Lagoon Cultures of the Ivory Coast." In the Lagoon area artists, believe themselves to be divinely inspired, to be born with the skill, not trained, and therefore avoid workshop situations. The very idea of a workshop is inimical to concepts of artistic inspiration.

BARBARA JOHNSON: Barbara Johnson, from the M. H. De Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, spoke about the research she has carried out on brass casters among the Dan, in a paper titled "Ldamie, Figurative Brass Caster of the Dan." She identified the personal style of a single Dan caster:Ldamie--established a corpus of his work, and described the history of his career.

BARBARA BLACKMUN: Barbara Blackmun, from La Mesa College in San Diego, spoke about "Royal and Nonroyal Benin: Distinctions in Igbesanmwan Ivory Carving" in Benin. Professor Blackmun's paper makes it clear that ivory carvers in the hereditary carver's guild specialized in work for two major groups of patrons in Benin: Certain carvers worked on commissions for the Oba, while others carved in a similar but less refined style for Benin chiefs. The paper also presents a very detailed historical and iconographic analysis of a group of carved ivory tusks from Benin.

JOHN PEMBERSTON III: John Pemberton, from the Religion Department at Amherst College, discussed "The Yoruba Carvers of Ila.Orangun." Professor Pemberton's paper comprises a detailed survey of the historical development of the workshops of the Igbomina Yoruba town of Ila-.Orangun in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The characteristic sculptural styles of each of the workshops are described. It becomes clear that each workshop has its idiosyncratic style, each sharing common traits with the other styles of Ila, which is, in turn, part of a larger Igbomina style. Names and dates of prominent artists are provided in profusion, contributing to a remarkable diachronic study in a discipline that is better known for non-historical functionalist studies. This broad variety of approaches to a problem and range of results is typical of any study of a continent that can only be characterized by diversity.