Barbara E. Frank

Professor Emerita of Art History
Toll Professor

Areas of Specialization:African Art

Ph.D. Indiana University
Email: Barbara.Frank@stonybrook.edu
Office: Staller Center for the Arts #4219

Barbara Frank is Professor Emerita of Art History whose primary research has focused on ceramic and textile artists, leatherworkers and blacksmiths in Mali, West Africa. She is currently working with a dedicated team from the National Museum of Mali with a grant from UCLA’s Modern Endangered Archive Program (2023-2025) to digitize the analog photographic archives of the National Museum of Mali.

Professor Frank’s most recent book, Griot Potters of the Folona, The History of an African Ceramic Tradition (Indiana University Press, 2022; https://iupress.org/9780253058997/griot-potters-of-the-folona/) won the 2023 SAfA Book Prize for breaking down disciplinary divisions in African Archaeology, as well as the 2024 Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award from the Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA). Other publications include Mande Potters and Leatherworkers. Art and Heritage in West Africa (Smithsonian, 1998, 2001) selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Book, and an edited volume Status and Identity in West Africa: Nyamakalaw of Mande (Indiana, 1995). Frank has held major fellowships including a Social Science Research Council Grant, two National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowships, three Fulbright-Hays Research Abroad Fellowships, and a Smithsonian Institution Senior Research Fellowship. She remains active in a number of professional organizations, including the Mande Studies Association (MANSA) and the Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA), among others.