Peter Probst
Research/Areas of Interest
Museum and Heritage Studies, African Arts, Institutional Theories, Value and Valuation, Historiography
Education
- Habilitation, University of Bayreuth, Germany, 2001
- Dr. phil., Free University of Berlin, Germany, 1990
- M.Phil., Cambridge University, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 1984
- M.A., Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany, 1983
Biography
I work at the intersection of art history, anthropology, and museum studies with a particular focus on the arts of Global Africa. The topics of my books range from the debate on African modernities (2002) and the study of landscape, locality, and belonging in Malawi (2006) to the political aesthetic of heritage and the dynamics of modernism in Nigeria (2011). My most recent books are informed by the so-called decolonial turn in the humanities and social sciences. "National Museums in Africa" came out in 2021 with Routledge. Co-edited with Ray Silverman and George Abungu, the volume explores the role and history of African national museums in the context of the current debates on restitution and decolonization. "What is African art? A Short History" came out in 2022 with The University of Chicago Press. It discusses the making, remaking, and unmaking of African art as a field of study from its colonial beginnings in the late 19th century to the decolonial present. "Art History and Anthropology - Modern Encounters, 1870 and 1970," was published in Fall 2023 with Getty Publications. Co-edited with Joseph Imorde the volume interrogates the complex relationships of art history and anthropology during the entangled periods of modernism and colonialism. I am currently starting a new project on postmigrant dynamics and the inheritance of loss with a special focus on the history of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin.