John Mack FBA FSA (born 10 July 1949 [1] in Belfast, Northern Ireland) is a British social anthropologist and art historian specialising in African arts and cultures (particularly Equatorial African and the western Indian Ocean). He is an academic and former museum curator.
His research focuses mostly on the Congo area, South Sudan, Kenya, Madagascar and Zanzibar, and addresses questions of memory and art, the process of miniaturisation, the cultural significance of the sea and more recently the relationship between art and death. [2]
John Mack attended Campbell College, Belfast before studying for BA (Hon) in Social Anthropology (1971) and MA in The History of Ideas (1972) both at the University of Sussex. He obtained his D.Phil at Merton College, University of Oxford (1975) for a thesis entitled “WHR Rivers and the contexts of anthropology”. [2]
Mack held a series of curatorial appointments at the British Museum (initially at the Museum of Mankind) from 1976 to 2004. In May 1976, he became a Research Assistant, before being appointed Assistant Keeper in November 1976 and Keeper of Ethnography (1991-2004). He also served as the British Museum's Senior Keeper from 1997 to 2003. [3]
Since 2004, Mack has been Professor of World Art Studies at the University of East Anglia, Norwich where he was Director of Research in 2007–2008, before becoming the Head of the School of World Art and Museology (2009-2012). [4]
At the University of East Anglia, he has also served on the Sainsbury Research Unit Advisory Board (1999-2015), on the Board of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (2009-2018) and he co-founded with Anne Haour UEA's Centre for African Art and Archaeology in 2009. [5] Elsewhere he is also the Chair of the Editorial Board of World Art, [6] as well as a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Material Culture [7] and the Journal of Art Historiography. [8]
Mack has conducted field research in South Sudan and Northern Kenya (1979, 1980), in Madagascar (1984, 1985, 1987), in Zanzibar (1994) and again in Northern Kenya (2008). [2]
Mack was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1994 and became a Fellow of the British Academy in 2009 (emeritus in 2019). [9]
He was made an Hon. life Vice President of The British Institute in Eastern Africa in 2017, after being its president from 2005 to 2011 and prior to that a Board Member. [10]
He is also a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and of the Salzburg Global Seminar. [11]
In May 2022 a conference celebrating John's distinguished career, contribution to scholarship and support of colleagues and students was organised at the University of East Anglia.
Mack has curated a number of major museum exhibitions and galleries across his career, both at the Museum of Mankind/British Museum [12] and at international venues.
At the British Museum, he had overall responsibility for the Mexican Gallery (1994), the North American Gallery (1999) and the Wellcome Trust Gallery (2003). [3]
Mack has also contributed to a number of other museum organisations. He has been a Board Member of the West African Museums Programme (Dakar, Senegal) (1993-1998), a Trustee of the Horniman Museum and Gardens, London (1998-2011), on the Board of Visitors of the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford (1999-2011) and a Member of the Conseil d’orientation de l’Etablissement public du Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris (1999). Since 2014, he has been a Trustee of the South Asian Decorative Arts and Crafts Collection, Norwich. [18]
Amongst numerous articles and other edited or authored books, [19] Mack has published the following:
The Bushongo or Songora are an ethnic group from the Congo River and surrounding areas. The creator god in Bushongo religion is called Bumba. Other names for him include M'Bombo and M'Bomba. He is said to have originally existed alone in darkness, in a universe consisting of nothing but primordial water. M'Bombo was said to appear like a gigantic man in form and white in colour. The creation took place when he vomited the sun, moon, animals and then humanity.
The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a public research university in Norwich, England. Established in 1963 on a 320-acre (130-hectare) campus west of the city centre, the university has four faculties and twenty-six schools of study. It is one of five BBSRC funded research campuses with thirty businesses, four independent research institutes and a teaching hospital on site.
The Sainsbury Centre is a world art museum located on the campus of the University of East Anglia, Norwich, England. As part of its radical relaunch in 2023 under new executive director, [Cooper|Dr Jago Cooper], the Sainsbury Centre became the first museum in the world to formally recognise art as alive. The Centre's ethos 'Living Art Sharing Stories' aims to give agency to the objects in the collection, as well as enable people to build relationships with the living works of art.
Tatlinʼs Tower, or the project for the Monument to the Third International (1919–20), was a design for a grand monumental building by the Russian artist and architect Vladimir Tatlin, that was never built. It was planned to be erected in Petrograd after the October Revolution of 1917, as the headquarters and monument of the Communist International.
Timon Screech was professor of the history of art at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London from 1991 - 2021, when he left the UK in protest over Brexit. He is now a professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto. Screech is a specialist in the art and culture of early modern Japan.
The Sainsbury Institute for Art (SIfA) is based in the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.
The indigenous people within the kasai basin up to Maniema understood themselves to be descendants of "AnKutshu Membele", then in the 20th century many accepted the imposed term Tetela . "Batetela" is now understood as an ethnic group of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, most of whom speak the Tetela language.
Norwich Research Park (NRP) is a business community located to the southwest of Norwich in East Anglia close to the A11 and the A47 roads. Set in a 568-acre (230-hectare) area of parkland, it is one of five Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) funded Research and Innovation Campuses. It is the only site with three BBSRC funded research institutes and is considered as having one of Europe's largest concentrations of researchers in the fields of agriculture, genomics, health and the environment.
The School of Art History and World Art Studies operates within the Faculty of Arts and Humanities department at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.
Peter Erik Lasko was a British art historian, Professor of Visual Art at the University of East Anglia, from 1965 to 1974, Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, from 1974–85 and a Fellow of the British Academy.
William Buller Fagg was a British curator and anthropologist. He was the Keeper of the Department of Ethnography at the British Museum (1969–1974), and pioneering historian of Yoruba and Nigerian art, with a particular focus on the art of Benin.
Thomas Athol Joyce OBE FRAI was a British anthropologist. He became an acknowledged expert on American and African Anthropology at the British Museum. He led expeditions to excavate Maya sites in British Honduras. He wrote articles for the Encyclopædia Britannica including "Negro" which was derided in 1915 for its assumption of racial inferiority. He was the President of both the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Anthropological section of the British Association.
Emil Torday, was a Hungarian anthropologist. He was the father of the romance novelist Ursula Torday.
Paul Greenhalgh is a British historian, writer, museologist, and curator of art and design.
Christina Riggs is a British-American historian, academic, and former museum curator. She specializes in the history of archaeology, history of photography, and ancient Egyptian art, and her recent work has concentrated on the history, politics, and contemporary legacy of the 1922 discovery of Tutankahmun's tomb. Since 2019, she has been Professor of the History of Visual Culture at Durham University. She is also a former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. The author of several academic books, Riggs also writes on ancient Egyptian themes for a wider audience. Her most recent books include Ancient Egyptian Magic: A Hands-On Guide and Treasured: How Tutankhamun Shaped a Century.
Mary Webb is a British abstract artist.
Thomas Alexander "Sandy" Heslop,, publishing as T. A. Heslop, is a British academic who specialises in the art and architecture of medieval England. He is Professor of Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia (UEA). He was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge for the 1997/1998 academic year.
Andrew Henry Robert Martindale (1932–1995) was Professor of Visual Art at the University of East Anglia at the time of his sudden death, aged just 62. One of the pioneers in the teaching of art history as an academic discipline and a founding member of the Association of Art Historians, he was also a highly respected medieval scholar specialising in the late Gothic and early Renaissance periods with a number of publications to his name. His 1972 book, The Rise of the Artist, is much vaunted, often cited, and has been described as 'a brilliant study of the hierarchies within the medieval patronage system'.
Anne Haour is an anthropologically trained archaeologist, academic and Africanist scholar. She is Professor in the Arts and Archaeology of Africa at the Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom. In July 2021 she was elected Fellow of the British Academy in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the social sciences, humanities and arts.
Margaret Plass MBE (1896–1990) was an American anthropologist, collector of African artefacts and patron of the British Museum alongside her husband, Webster Plass.