Prof. Dr. Peter Probst
Curriculum
Peter Probst is a Professor of Art History specializing in African modernism at Tufts University in Boston. He studied anthropology, art history, communications, and sociology in Berlin and Cambridge, England. After holding positions in Berlin, Frankfurt and Bayreuth, he joined Tufts University in 2005. His research interests intersect art history, ethnology, and museum studies, ranging from questions of modernist theory and the history of ideas to the generational dynamics of heritage.
Publications (selection)
- African Modernities, Oxford: James Curry, 2002 (co-edited Jan Georg Deutsch).
- Kalumbas Fest, Berlin: Lit, 2005.
- Osogbo or the Art of Heritage, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011.
- National Museums of Africa, New York: Routledge 2021, (co-edited with Ray Silverman and Georges Abungu).
- What is African Art? A Short History, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022 (Dt Konstanz University Press 2024).
- Art History and Anthropology. Modern Encounters, Los Angeles: Getty Publications 2023 (co-edited with Joseph Imorde).
Research project: When Forces Turn into Politics: Art and Conflict in a Nigerian Energy Landscape
What happens when different experiences of power and energy collide and vie for social validity? This project addresses this question on the basis of an artistically transformed landscape in southwestern Nigeria. The focus is on the sacred grove of the indigenous river deity Osun in the Nigerian city of Osogbo. In response to threats to the grove posed by the fossil fuel-driven energy hunger of modern postcolonial Nigeria, the Austrian artist Susanne Wenger began, in the 1960s and 1970s, to reshape the formerly largely aniconic grove by creating new expressionist shrines and sculptures. Thus reconstituted as a force field of indigenous deities, the project explores the resulting conflicts over claims to the recognition of (meta)physical realities.