What do we mean by 'art'? As a category of objects, the concept belongs to a Western cultural tradition, but how useful is it for understanding other traditions? To understand art as a universal human value, we need to look at how the concept was constructed in order to reconstruct it through an understanding of the wider world.

Ben Burt has worked for the British Museum for almost forty years, as an anthropologist, educator and curator in what is now the department of Africa, Oceania and Americas. He has published museum educational materials and studies of the culture and history of Solomon Islands, and this book derives from his world art teaching for Birkbeck College, University of London.

PrefaceIntroduction: The Art in ArtefactsPart I: Western Perspectives Chapter 1 - The Origins of ArtChapter 2 - Classical ArtChapter 3 - Oriental ArtChapter 4 - Primitive ArtChapter 5 - Prehistoric ArtPart II: Cross-cultural PerspectivesChapter 6 - FormChapter 7 - MeaningChapter 8 - PerformanceChapter 9 - ArchaeologyChapter 10 - The Work of ArtPart III: Artistic Globalisation Chapter 11 - The Art WorldChapter 12 - The Exotic PrimitiveChapter 13 - Marketing Exotic ArtChapter 14 - Artistic ColonialismChapter 15 - The Global and the LocalAfterwordReferencesIndex