Babatunde Lawal

Who is Babatunde Lawal?

Babatunde Lawal is an art historian and scholar of the arts of Nigeria. His research is focused on the visual culture of the Yoruba and its influences in the Americas. He is currently a professor of Art History at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Lawal was born and raised in Isale-Eko, a district of Lagos. Having been raised in Nigeria himself, Lawal's scholarship demonstrates the use of a theoretical model that draws heavily from first-person accounts of various Nigeria customs and art making practices. This sets him apart from the majority of European and American scholars of African art.

In his book on Gelede, Lawal writes: "A number of scholars [...] have called for a new critical approach that will allow African traditions to be studied on their own terms, instead of being viewed through Eurocentric lenses... What is urgently needed, as Henry Gates has pointed out, is a method that enables a given culture 'to speak for itself about its nature and various functions, rather than to read it, or analyse it, in terms of... theories borrowed whole from other traditions, appropriated from without.'"