Book review : Alison Smith, David Blayney Brown, and Carol Jacobi, eds. Artist and Empire : Facing Britain’s Imperial Past. London: Tate, 2016

Artist and Empire: Facing Britain’s Imperial Past is both a fascinating and frustrating compendium of art made since the sixteenth century that either depicts, reflects, or comments upon, British colonialism. Written by a team of Tate curators, with contributions by Gus Casely-Hayford, Annie E. Coombes, Paul Gilroy, Nicholas Thomas and Sean Willcock, this exhibition catalogue seeks to address the legacies of the British Empire: to reconsider how Empire was recorded and perceived by those artists actively involved in, or affected by, Britain’s colonial enterprise; to equitably present and reconsider artworks by indigenous or colonized people; to identify and celebrate artistic cross-fertilization and hybrid adaptation; and to examine artistic post-colonial critique