Z. S. Strother Explained

Zoë S. Strother
Occupation:	Art historian
Riggio Professor of African Art
Awards:	Guggenheim Fellow (2000)
Discipline:	African Art

Zoë S. Strother is an art historian. She serves as Riggio Professor of African Art at Columbia University. Her work focuses on 20th and 21st-century Central and West African art history.

She graduated from Yale University.^[1]

Strother was a 2000 Guggenheim Fellow.^[2] Her book Inventing Masks^{[3] [4] [5] [6]} won the 2001 Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award from the Arts Council of the African Studies Association.^[7] In it she describes masks as part of a larger performance and thus creative process. Against the Franz Boas vein of interpreting African art such as masks as a conservative matter of tradition, Strother’s fieldwork finds they are a site of invention and novelty, demonstrating the agency of the creators and wearers. Critics praised the book, saying the cover blurbs were “not hyperbole”.

Works

• Inventing Masks: Agency and History in the Art of the Central Pende (University of Chicago Press, 1998),
• Pende (5 Continents Editions, 2008)
• Vladimir Markov and Russian Primitivism: A Charter for the Avant-Garde' with Jeremy Howard and Irēna Bužinska (Ashgate, 2015),
• Humor and Violence: Seeing Europeans in Central African Art, 1850-1997 (Indiana University Press, 2016),

Notes and References

1. Web site: Zoë Strother - Faculty - Department of Art History and Archaeology - Columbia University . 19 April 2022 . arthistory.columbia.edu . Columbia University.
2. Web site: John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Z. S. Strother. www.gf.org. John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. 2 March 2017.
3. Muller. Jean-Claude. 1999. Z.S. STROTHER, Inventing Masks. Agency and History in the Art of the Central Pende. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1998, 348 p., 8 planches couleur, photogr., bibliogr., index.. Anthropologie et Sociétés. fr. 23. 3. 188–190. 10.7202/015626ar. 0702-8997. free.
4. Argenti. Nicolas. 2000-03-01. Inventing masks: agency and history in the art of the central Pende. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. en. 6. 1. 182.
5. Vansina. J.. September 1998. Z.S. Strother. Inventing Masks: Agency and History in the Art of the Central Pende. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. xxvii + 348 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Appendix. Bibliography. Index. $49.95. Cloth.. African Studies Review. en. 41. 2. 178–179. 10.2307/524848. 524848. 146996693 . 0002-0206.
6. De Heusch. Luc. 2000. Strother, Z. S., 1998 : Inventing masks. Agency and history in the art of the Central Pende. Journal des Africanistes. 70. 1. 383–390.
7. Web site: ACASA : Arts Council of the African Studies Association. https://archive.today/20080705023933/http://www.acasaonline.org/awards_past.htm%23ArnoldRubinOutstandingPublicationAward. dead. 5 July 2008. archive.is. African Studies Association. 2 March 2017. 5 July 2008.