Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria

In the years before the outbreak of Nigerian civil war in 1967, a group of students inaugurated “postcolonial modernism” in newly independent Nigeria. In Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria, Chika Okeke-Agulu, a professor of art and archaeology at Princeton, explores how these students and other young Nigerian artists translated the experiences of decolonization into a distinctive “postcolonial modernism” that has continued to inform the work of major Nigerian artists. 

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The February 2026 cover of PAW, featuring a photo of Joseph Nye.
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February 2026

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