Professor, O Cavalheiro Anthony Alan Shelton
BA (Hull), MLitt (Oxon), DPhil (Oxon), FCMA
Books
I have published extensively in the areas of visual culture, critical museology, history of collecting and various aspects of Mexican cultural history. My works include Art, Anthropology, and Aesthetics (with J. Coote eds., 1992); Museums and Changing Perspectives of Culture (1995); Fetishism: Visualizing Power and Desire (1995); Collectors: Individuals and Institutions (2001); Collectors: Expressions of Self and Others (2001), Luminescence: The Silver of Peru (2012), Heaven and Hell and Somewhere in Between: Portuguese Popular Art (2015), Under Different Moons: African Art in Conversation (2021) and Theatrum Mundi, Masks and Masquerades in Mexico and the Andes (2021).
Authored Books

Under Different Moons: African Art in Conversation.
Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing and UBC MOA, 2021. Pp. 236
Under Different Moons: African Art in Conversation shares—for the first time in print—the UBC Museum of Anthropology’s extensive collection of objects from dozens of African cultures, gathered over nearly a century. These include masks from the Baule peoples of Côte d’Ivoire, the Bijogos people of Guinea Bissau, and the Dogon peoples of Mali; three Bamana / Bozo puppet sets from Mali and Burkina Faso, with floats, cloth awnings and related animal masks as well as masterworks from other Canadian museum collections. Throughout the book are beautiful photos of over 100 objects from the collection, as well as a dozen photos of contemporary artworks by Nigerian and Nigerian-Canadian artists.
The first part of the book, by Anthony Alan Shelton, draws on expansive ethnographic literature to contextualize MOA’s collection within seven themes that reoccur in a wide number of societies across the African continent as well as in areas of Brazil and the Caribbean. In the second part, Titilope Salami focuses on contemporary Nigerian and diasporic artists to show the continued relevance of ritual practices in Nigerian artworks. And in the third part, Nuno Porto examines specific items in MOA’s collection to reveal the social, historical, and market networks in which they once circulated and the changing significances ascribed them.
Under Different Moons is part of a wider attempt to bring to public attention, especially that of African and diasporic Canadian communities, parts of an important cultural legacy, safeguarded in museums across the country, that can help empower new sectors and generations of citizens and widen the breadth and understanding of Canada’s multi- and intercultural character.
Find it here.

Theatrum Mundi, Masks and Masquerades in Mexico and the Andes.
Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing and UBC MOA, 2021. Pp. 239
Theatrum Mundi (“the theatre of the world”) describes the diversity of masks and performances that originated from the violent struggles between European, Arabic and “New World” civilizations. This authoritative study celebrates over 500 years of Mexican and South American Indigenous dance dramas and explains how mask makers, religious practitioners, masqueraders and entrepreneurs have helped to continuously reinvent, revitalize and express the changing world around them.
This book is the culmination of Dr. Anthony Shelton's four decades of research on Latin American masks and masquerades, the text is illustrated by field photographs and images from MOA and other notable mask collections.

From Carnival to Lucha Libre. Mexican Masks and Devotions / Do Carnaval à Luta Libre: Máscaras e Devoções Mexicanas
(co-authored with Nicola Levell). Lisbon, Museu de Lisboa, 2017. Pp. 206
From Carnival to Lucha Libre: Mexican Masks and Devotions offers a series of glimpses into some of the most ingenious expressions of Mexico’s collective imagination, made and performed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Unlike previous books on Mexican masks, From Carnival to Lucha Libre not only invites us to reflect on the relations between Indigenous and mestizo ceremonial and commercial masks and masquerades, but expands the lens to encompass the distinctive masks worn by the luchadores (wrestlers) and devoted fans of lucha libre, Mexico’s iconic wrestling culture.
The book illustrates with over 300 masks, as well as films and posters and a selection of superb photographs of luchadores by the celebrated visual artist Lourdes Grobet. The organization of the book follows the layout of the exhibition. Immersion begins in room one, Mirrored Worlds, with Tlaxcala carnival masks and masquerades featuring catrines, depictions of European dandies once credited with supernatural powers to bring the rains. Mirrored Worlds leads to room two, Theatres of Memory, and its rich display of ceremonial masks, including devils, tigers, Spaniards, Africans and Moors, to name just a few of the characters engaged in the millenarian battles between good and evil. Room three, the Mexican Imaginarium, is full of fantastic creations, from masks representing bats, alligators and other animals, to demons, mermaids and plumed serpents, ingeniously created by Mexican artists in response to market demand. From the Imaginarium, we step into the world of lucha libre, in films, posters, masks and images to encounter the legendary luchadores of the ring, the reel, and the still.

Heaven, Hell and Somewhere In Between: Portuguese Popular Art.
Vancouver and Berkeley, Figure 1 Publishing and UBC MOA, 2015. Pp 284
Heaven, Hell and Somewhere In Between combines an in-depth analysis of Portuguese popular art and culture with stunning photographs of forty artworks—ceramics, masks, puppets—and another sixty supporting images, from medieval frescoes and roadside icons to graffiti and images of carnival performers and artisans at work in their studios. Complex, contemporary, theatrical, political, and often controversial, this is the theatre of a nation, where official ideologies collide with homegrown art and culture to give rise to deeply felt emotions that range from ecstasy and transcendence to suffering and penitence.
Edited Volumes

Luminescence: The Silver of Peru [printed in English and Spanish]
Lima, Patronato Plata del Peru. 2012
Read:
-
Find the whole book here

The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia
(Co-editor, with Carol Mayer). Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre Publishing. 2009
Read:

Collectors. Expressions of Self and Other
London and Coimbra, The Horniman Museum and the Museu Antropologica da Universidade de Coimbra.
Read:

Collectors. Individuals and Institutions.
London and Coimbra, The Horniman Museum and the Museu Antropologica da Universidade de Coimbra.
Read:

Masks.
London, Stratagems / The Prince’s Trust.
Read:
-
Journeying Between Worlds: The Masks of Africa, Oceania and the Americas

Fetishism: Visualising Power and Desire.
London, Southbank Centre / Lund Humphries.
Read:

Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics
(co-editor with J. Coote), Oxford, Clarendon Press.
Read:
Book Chapters
2018
Critical Museology. In Sandra Lopez Varela (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Archaeological Sciences. John Wiley & Sons. https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781119188230.
Book Introductions, Prefaces & Forwards
2017



(with N. Levell). Introduction. In A. Shelton and N. Levell (eds.), From Carnival to Lucha Libre. Mexican Masks and Devotions. Lisbon, Museu de Lisboa. Pp. 21-30.
2008



Foreword. In S. R. Butler, Contested Representations: Revisiting Into the Heart of Africa. Toronto, Broadview Press: 1-3.
2001



Introduction. The Return of the Subject. In A. Shelton (ed.), Collectors. Expressions of Self and Other. London and Coimbra, The Horniman Museum and Museu Antropologica da Universidade de Coimbra: 11-22.
2001



Introduction. Doubts Affirmations. In A. Shelton (ed.), Collectors. Individuals and Institutions. London and Coimbra, The Horniman Museum and the Museu Antropologica da Universidade de Coimbra: 13-22.
2000



Preface. In K. Arnaut (ed.), Re-visions. New Perspectives on the African Collections of the Horniman Museum. London and Coimbra, The Horniman Museum and the Museu Antropologica da Universidade de Coimbra: 9-12.
1995



Introduction. Sonia Boyce, Peep. London, Institute of International Visual Arts. 1-3.
1992



(with J. Coote) Introduction. In J. Coote and A. Shelton (eds), Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics. Oxford, Clarendon Press. 1-11.