A New Theory and Method for the Study of Tourist Art: The Case of The Flow or Happy Family Genre in Zimbabwean Shona Stone Sculpture

A New Theory and Method for the Study of Tourist Art proposes that the combined rigor of an aesthetic, visual, scientific and ethnographic approach allows for the precise documentation of formal variation and changes in meanings and cultural relevance over time in response to market demands. It argues that should ethnographers and art historians conduct sustained field studies of tourist arts with John Ruskin's advice in mind, that sketching is a prerequisite for appreciating form, they may discover surprising insights that would not emerge otherwise. In this detailed formal case study of one genre of Shona sculpture from Zimbabwe, we learn that there exists a significant degree of variation, innovation and meaning in a craft form traditionally dismissed by art historians as repetitive, mass produced and meaningless kitsch.

Jonathan Zilberg is a cultural anthropologist specializing in the study of art, religion and museums. He is an affiliate research scholar with the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and formerly a fellow in residence at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C.