The original edition of this book was written to fill the need for a usable text for my own undergraduate and graduate students at Emory University, and by extension, those of my colleagues offering a course in contemporary African art. At the time (1999) nearly everything available consisted of large-format picture books with brief essays or descriptions. I therefore transformed my own course syllabus and lectures into a book that would explore what I saw as the basic issues surrounding the emergence of postcolonial African art in a large number of African countries. I had considerable help from my graduate students Jessica Taplin (now Stephenson) with the bibliography and Elizabeth Gron (now Morton) with the index. In this new version that help has come from ex-students Amanda Hellman, who searched for many of my slides hidden away in cabinets and boxes in Atlanta while I was in Kenya, and Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi, who helped me understand Dak’Art, the Dakar Biennale. One major difference is that now nearly all artists are reachable online while twenty years ago it was much more of a challenge to contact them except through dealers. I also wish to thank Gary van Wyk in New York and Olivier Sultan in Paris for helping to pry loose permissions and difficult-to-reach information. Most of all I am deeply indebted to Pauline Hubner, my Thames & Hudson picture researcher, and editor Kate Edwards, who worked with me on improving the text. Both were unfailingly patient with my wide-ranging requests and made this a much better book. The field of contemporary art, including African, has been strongly affected by the expansion of the global art market and borderless capitalism and in Africa itself the proliferation of biennials and auctions. That and the exploding interest in African photography have prompted me to write this new edition.