Tanzania has slightly more than 120 ethnic groups, some of which were organized into chiefdoms during the colonial period. In regions that did not have traditional chiefs, the colonial administration opted to create them. During independence, the burden of creating national unity fell to Julius Kambarage Nyerere, the first president of Tanganyika (now Tanzania). Under Nyerere, Tanzania adopted a brand of socialism called Ujamaa or “African socialism” in 1967. Nyerere announced the shift in the Arusha Declaration six years after independence. Some scholars, such as Sam Maghimbi (2012), view this form of socialism as purely focused on agrarian reform or as a branch of utopian socialism. The present article explores how visual artistic production was shaped by socialism in Tanzania during the Ujamaa period (1967–1985), by the dismantling of socialism under neoliberal reform (1985–present), and by the effects of postsocialist changes that theorists like Katherine Verdery describe as “the redefinition of virtually everything, including morality, social relations, and basic meanings. It means a reordering of people's entire [set of] meaningful worlds” (1985: 35). The article thus assesses the promotion and management of the visual arts from the socialist regime to the postsocialist present, starting with early attempts to decolonize the arts in Tanzania as a strategy for creating a national cultural identity, followed by a discussion of the rise of local art schools and movements, and concluding with an exploration of state patronage of the arts during and after socialism.Under Ujamaa, the first national strategy Nyerere devised was to absorb the chiefs into the civil service as ambassadors, directors of government corporations, regional commissioners, and so on. His second strategy was to look for ways to raise people's awareness about the importance of cultural emancipation—not through cultural ideologies such as Mobutu's authenticité (in which people adopted ethnic names and changed their mode of dress) or Senghor's Négritude (in which the emphasis was on carrying out the president's perceptions of ethnic aesthetics), but through government management and administration. During his inaugural presidential address to the Tanganyika Parliament on December 10, 1962, Nyerere told the nation,Nyerere went on to challenge the glorification of colonial-inspired songs and the music taught to people of his generation at school:Nyerere's ideology of socialist realism was muted. Unlike some socialist nations in Asia, Europe, and Africa, he never declared a national aesthetic to which artists must adhere. Instead, artists were free to create art in any style they wished. This amazed scholars and writers such as Judith Miller (1975), who lamented the lack of social comment in Tanzanian art and wondered why artists never expressed their reactions to Ujamaa in their artworks.In an attempt to trace the influence of the Ujamaa ideology, writers such as Kojo Fosu (1986), wrongly identify Sam Ntiro (1923–1993) as an exemplar. Mario Pissarra (2015: 56) quotes Angelo Kakande, who also supports the view that Ntiro's paintings of villages reflect Nyerere's ideology of African socialism. In reality, Ntiro's works were influenced by his mentor, Margaret Trowell, when he was a student at the Makerere Art School in the 1940s.According to Elsbeth Court (1996: 291), Trowell encouraged her students to create art associated with local practices but taught neither observational drawing nor formal experimentation, a factor that may have contributed to Ntiro's naive style (Figs. 1a–b). The style might explain why Jonathan Kingdon refers to him, perhaps derogatively, as “the Grandpa Moses of East Africa” (1996: 291).Trowell prepared Ntiro to teach at the Makerere Art School in the 1950s, but in 1961 he joined the Tanzanian civil service as commissioner for culture. Some writers (e.g., Kasfir 1999: 149) wrongly view Ntiro's departure for Tanzania as a dismissal engineered by Cecil Todd, the head of the Makerere Art School. Kasfir's attitude might originate from her indifference to Ntiro's painting style, which irritated many critics, including Gregory Maloba, Ntiro's contemporary at the Makerere Art School. For example, George Kyeyune writes,After his retirement from the civil service in 1973, Ntiro found employment at the University of Dar es Salaam as a senior lecturer in art education within the Department of Education. His former student at the Makerere Art School, Elias Jengo, was serving as acting director of the university's Institute of Education. They joined hands to establish the Department of Art, Music and Theater (today the Department of Creative Arts) in 1975, with an enrollment of 30 students (annual enrollment today is over 300 students). The two artists, with their distinctly different art styles, worked together on numerous local art projects commissioned by public corporations, the central bank, and the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi political party. For most projects, Jengo did the drawings while Ntiro chose the color scheme and often painted. Despite continuing to work on state-sponsored art projects after his retirement from public service, Ntiro did not change the style and themes of his work in response to Nyerere's Ujamaa.If Ujamaa does not appear in the stylistic or thematic choices of major Tanzanian artists who otherwise worked on public projects, the country's present-day management and administration of cultural activities, particularly in the areas of painting and sculpture, continues to be strongly influenced by the speech Nyerere delivered some sixty years ago. This is often reflected in works by some contemporary artists such as Elias Jengo (Figs. 2a–b), whose themes are dominated by local mythologies from a variety of ethnic groups in Tanzania and major world events. Although the Ministry of Culture and Youth has undergone cosmetic changes over the years, it has never abandoned the key functions described in Nyerere's speech.Currently known as the Ministry of Information, Culture, Art and Sports, its major agencies in the arts include the National Arts Council (Baraza la Sanaa la Taifa; founded in 1984), National Film Board (founded in 1976), Copyright Society of Tanzania (established in 1999), and the Institute of Culture and Arts Bagamoyo (Taasisi ya Utamaduni na Sanaa Bagamoyo, founded in 1980 as the National College of Arts, or Chuo cha Sanaa cha Taifa). The present-day management and administration of the ministry has been affected by current national needs.To understand the impact Nyerere's 1962 speech had on the promotion and management of visual arts in Tanzania, it is important to consider the major art schools and movements that have enjoyed government patronage since the founding of the Ministry of Culture and Youth. From the early 1960s, Tanzania began to host home-grown art schools and movements such as the Zaramo sculpture movement, the modern Makonde sculpture movement, and the Tingatinga painting school. Each is “home-grown” in the sense that it was not founded by expatriates, unlike the Shona sculpture movement founded by Frank McEwen in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe); the Tengenenge sculpture group established by Tom Blomefield during Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence; the Oshogbo Experimental workshop in Nigeria conducted by Ulli Beier; the Nyumba ya Sanaa (House of Arts) managed by Sister Jean Pruitt in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; or the Poto-Poto school founded by Pierre Lods in Congo-Brazzaville. The works of these mentor-driven movements reflect the aesthetic demands of their founders. But to what extent were the three indigenous Tanzanian art groups promoted during the socialist and postsocialist phases of Tanzania's cultural development?This movement was established in Tanzania by migrant Makonde carvers who arrived in the early 1930s from the Mueda Plateau in Cabo Delgado Province, northern Mozambique, bordering the Ruvuma River that separates Mozambique from Tanzania. The Mueda Makonde are renowned for their carving skills and for traditions of scarification and tattooing on their faces, chests, and backs. According to Kingdon,This subsection of the Makonde ethnic group, known derogatively as Mawia (the fierce ones), has nurtured a strong sense of cultural heritage and often draws on their mythological beliefs as subject matter for their sculpture.Most Makonde sculptors live in the outskirts of Dar es Salaam in the neighborhoods of Kibaha, Boko village, Chanika, Mkuranga, Mkamba, and Zinga near Bagamoyo. Master sculptors Robert Yakobo Sangwani, Samaki Likankoa, Clements Matei Ngala, and Chanuo Maundu are the founders of distinct original styles whose substyles and variants can be seen all over the world (Figs. 5–8). Before socialism came to Tanzania, their chief patron was Mohamed Peera, who operated a curio shop on Acacia Avenue (now Samora Avenue) in Dar es Salaam. Most sculptors in Dar es Salaam worked in the back of his shop. Peera, a businessman of South Asian descent, had moved from Zanzibar to Dar es Salaam after the death of his father in 1949. In the capital city he was instrumental in promoting modern Makonde sculpture and selling it all over the world. He started by promoting Zaramo sculpture to an American businessman living in New York. At that time, the Mueda Makonde sculptors had not yet arrived in Tanzania. Many Makonde living in the country had fallen under the influence of Muslim and Christian missionaries, who were deeply suspicious of the production of carvings, fearing idol worship among their converts. Several scholars believe that the introduction of Islam and Christianity is one of the reasons for the paucity of sculpture among most ethnic groups in Africa. For example, Antoine Lema writes, “African societies have lost ownership of some of their most precious cultural assets. The intrusions of Christianity, Islam, anthropology and trade coupled with inadequate culture policies of postcolonial states are at the root of the problem” (2007: 28). Two of the master Mueda sculptors, Chanuo Maundu and Samaki Likankoa, never converted to any form of religious denomination, and this is reflected in their works.In the early 1960s, Sangwani developed a style of sculpture that he named after the Makonde wrestling game dimoongo, meaning “power of strength” in the Makonde language (Wembah-Rashid 1979). Sangwani invented the style, characterized by a column of intertwined figures with a lone figure at the top, when he was working for Peera (Kingdon 2002: 87). The lone figure symbolizes the winner of the wrestling game held high on the shoulders of the fans. The style was renamed Ujamaa by a local political zealot who saw one of the sculptures at an exhibition and thought its cluster of figures suggested “togetherness” and thus reflected Nyerere's socialist philosophy. The name has since been widely adopted, with Sangwani's original designation abandoned. Ujamaa sculpture has also generated named substyles, such as Tree of Life, Mama Kimakonde, and Ujamaa Historia (Fig. 3), all of which denote high-relief sculpture on a background of mpingo (Dalbergia melanoxylon) wood. The background is supposed to remind the collector of the type of wood from which the original style came.The evolution of the shetani style is attributed to Samaki Likankoa, who also worked in the back of Peera's curio shop in the 1960s. Three conflicting theories circulate about what inspired Samaki to create this style. The first is that Samaki's father appeared to him in a dream and urged him to sculpt a figure with only one of each body part that in human beings is typically doubled (eyes, ears, arms, legs, breasts) or multiple (fingers, toes). Although Makonde people are traditionally matrilineal, ancestor worship does not discriminate against power from either mother or father. Likankoa thus had to respect the order from his deceased father even if the mother's side is given more attention.The second theory comes from Peera, who reported that Samaki brought to him a realistic sculpture of a figure split into two equal halves, each with one body part, after it had accidentally fallen and broken. Peera advised Samaki to go home and carve a sculpture showing only one body part instead of two. After a week, Samaki returned to Peera with a figure he called shetani (demon, devil), characterized by singular body parts: one eye, ear, finger, leg, and so on. Both men were surprised when the sculpture was purchased less than a week after its production. Peera then encouraged Samaki to carve more shetani sculptures. The impact of this commercial success inspired other sculptors, especially Ngala (Kingdon 2002).The third theory, known as the nandeenga theory, was advanced by Wembah-Rashid (1979), a cultural anthropologist who worked at the Village Museum, Dar es Salaam, and later as a lecturer at the University of Nairobi. A member of the Makua ethnic group (whose language is similar to that of the Makonde), Wembah-Rashid believed that Samaki was inspired by nandeenga, a mythological evil spirit in Makonde mythology who causes diseases such as smallpox, malaria, or the plague as punishment for villagers who break taboos. A nandeenga's body is characterized by singular body parts.The timing of the shetani style has been challenged by some scholars (e.g., Mshana 2001: 93), who argue that the first shetani sculpture was created by Samaki for a New Zealand curio exporter, Norman Kirk, at Mtwara, southern Tanzania, in the 1950s when Likankoa first entered Tanzania from Mozambique. That is, Peera might have received from Samaki a replica of the 1950s shetani. Regardless of the timing, however, most scholars agree that shetani is a one-man invention. The exception is Jeremy Coote, who, according to Mshana (2001: 100), believes that shetani is a communal Makonde invention. The original sculpture by Likankoa was bought a few days after its creation; subsequently, many versions were created by artists who were inspired by the shetani concept.The commercial success of Samaki's shetani sculpture inspired other sculptors at Peera's backyard workshop. One, Ngala, brought a similar sculpture to Peera, but it was not accepted for sale. Instead, he was told to come up with his own creation. After two weeks, he returned to Peera with a faceless human figure wearing a headdress, its raised right hand holding the moon and its lowered left hand the earth. Ngala called the abstract sculpture mawingu (clouds) because it was inspired by looking at early morning clouds. Peera accepted the work, and other sculptors such as Athanas Njawike (Fig. 4) became faithful disciples of the mawingu style. Africa has been home to abstract sculpture for thousands years for ritual and nonritual functions. But Ngala likely would not have produced mawingu while living in Mueda. His change in perception was the result of social change and new patronage.Ndondocha or mandandosa belongs, according to the inventor of the style, Chanuo Maundu, to the realm of sorcery, whereby a human being is turned into an invisible being and becomes a sorcery master's slave. The belief is common among many ethnic groups in Tanzania, some of whom call the mythical invisible creature msukulo. But what motivated Chanuo to carve a figure of an invisible being (Fig. 5)? According to Kingdon (2002: 147), Chanuo believed that mandandosa was a more complex form of spirit figure than shetani. So he thought he was more advanced than other sculptors by creating astonishing, imaginative figures. He “derides carvers who carve what he understands to be simply mashetani (devils) or simply majini (jinn). He … carves mandandosa … and that lindandosa is something that is used, whereas shetani is unintelligible” (Kingdon 2002:148). This reflects the character of Chanuo as a sculptor who hated to be derivative.The word kimbulumbulu comes from the Makonde word kuumbuluka, a type of nervous behavior. How does a sculptor express this in wood? Chanuo did so by carving a one-eyed figure with spindle legs and a large open mouth on top of which is a nose with large open nostrils connected to an eye by a cylindrical shaft. Above the eye is a forehead made of a lump of wood (Fig. 6). How Peera reacted to this sculpture is unrecorded because it was created in 1991, by which time Peera had settled in Paris. According to Chanuo, people exhibiting nervous behaviors make sudden harsh movements and lack poise. They might frighten others and move from one task to another without finishing the first. The “disorderly” arrangements of human body parts in a kimbulumbulu sculpture symbolizes such unstable behavior. The distortion of the human face into disjointed facial parts might also represent the unsettled nature of human thinking perceived by the sculptor while creating the artwork (Kingdon 2002).Kimbulumbulu is not a client-driven work of art. Chanuo simply wanted to show his stylistic independence in creating modern Makonde sculpture. He used to blame his contemporaries for not advancing themselves in their occupation for not developing their sculptural technique. “The first thing they looked for when a buyer came with an order was money,” Chanuo told Kingdon (2002: 212). Because Chanuo's work was not client-driven and did not derive stylistically from any of the modern Makonde sculptural styles of the time, all of which were outgrowths of shetani, his kimbulumbulu style has not attracted much attention from other Makonde sculptors.According to Chanuo, giligia style, created while Peera was still in Tanzania, is based on the fear a person experiences when alone in a huge forest. The name comes from the Makonde word kugiligia (to be startled). Sculpture in this style is characterized by a large protruding eye and teeth that project outside the mouth. No photographs of artwork in the style are available, however, and since most Makonde sculptors are inspired only by the myth of nandeenga, none have drawn inspiration from Chanuo's giligia style. The style was, however, a success—at least according to Chanuo. In an interview with Kingdon, he said,Throughout his creative life, Chanuo felt the urge to be original, a factor that compelled Kingdon to include him among the four Makonde sculptors he studied in depth for his PhD.Chanuo was inspired by the form of a gourd, situmba in the Makonde language, and incorporated the form in the figure sculpture he called tumbatumba, a style characterized by a human figure merged with the form of a gourd (Fig. 7). Gourds are widely used in many parts of Africa, particularly among pastoralists and rural people.As Nyerere anticipated in his speech inaugurating the Ministry of National Culture, modern Makonde sculpture is no longer the preserve of the Makonde people. Rather, it has been transformed from an ethnic art form into a national art form. The movement has attracted the attention of non-Makonde carvers as well. For example, Mallyi, a Chagga sculptor born in the Kilimanjaro region in 1953, has acquired some renown creating both abstract and nonrepresentational sculpture.The best-known sculpture from the Zaramo carving tradition is the mwanahiti fertility doll (Fig. 8). The term mwanahiti, according to Mshana (2009: 86), means “child of wood.” The doll is carved from a special hardwood called mkongo. The dolls are commissioned by female elders when a girl reaches puberty. The young female initiate (mwali) is secluded and given the doll to take care of as part of her family education. The bisexual symbolism of the doll is designed to instruct the girl that only women know the secret of life, that women are the progenitors and perpetrators of the lifeline (Swantz 1970: 169).Among contemporary Zaramo sculptors, Salum Ali Chuma is the best known. In the 1960s and early 1970s, he worked under the patronage of Peera, carving alongside Chanuo Maundu and Samaki Likankoa in the yard behind Peera's curio shop. He then spent eighteen months in Germany in 1974–1975, creating realistic sculptures such as Masai busts and elephants. His Masai Couple, carved in the 1960s, still adorns the ground floor of the five-star Kilimanjaro Hyatt Hotel in Dar es Salaam.Edward Saidi Tingatinga (b. 1932) founded the Tingatinga painting school in Dar es Salaam in 1968 while working as a gardener for an expatriate. Born in Namochelia, a village in Tunduru District, Ruvuma Region, southern Tanzania (Mwasanga 1998; Goscinny 2003; Nahimiani 2017), he grew up in a Makua ethnic area, where mural painting is practiced on villagers' huts, mainly featuring fauna and flora—an influence of the Selous Game Reserve (now Nyerere National Park) bordering the village. Edward migrated to the Tanga region, where he secured work as a laborer on a sisal farm. He then moved to Dar es Salaam, working first as a gardener, then as an attendant at Muhimbili Hospital.Dar es Salaam was where Tingatinga first became aware of the commercial value of painting. After observing Congolese paintings in curio shops, he decided to try his hand at it, using square pieces of Masonite and enamel paints. As he developed his skill and his work grew in popularity, he trained apprentices (mostly male family members) and registered the workshop as the Tingatinga Cooperative Society. When he later added a non-Makua student (his brother-in-law), his half-brother, Simon George Mpata (1942–1984), disagreed with the decision and left the group for Nairobi, where he remained until his death (Goscinny 2004: 53). Mpata's works are preserved in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Nairobi. He and four other apprentices formed the first generation of painters of the Tingatinga painting school. Their works are characterized by flat, two-dimensional depictions of fauna and flora, in a style typical of folk art (Fig. 9).After Nyerere's prediction concerning the building of national culture, the Tingatinga school outgrew its origins as a family enterprise and produced many outstanding non-Makua painters. These include Mseza, with his eclectic compositions; David Mzuguno, with a style characterized by imaginative, colorful, floral designs; George Lilanga, known for huge canvases depicting shetani figures; and John Kilaka and Abdul Mkura, who added shading and abstract figures. Today, the school continues to expand and evolve, with Nahimiani (2017) identifying more than twenty-five new Tingatinga painting styles. The one-object style developed by the founder is no longer common. Some members of the school have created complex compositions, and many are no longer members of the Tingatinga Cooperative Society.The popularity of Tingatinga art is based, to some extent, on tourists' romantic ideas about an African art untouched by Western influences. It plays on the fictitious concept of authentic African art introduced in the 1950s by Western art mentors, including Trowell, an avid admirer of African sculpture and medieval art. She regarded the art of the Renaissance period as having been corrupted by the incorporation of perspective and anatomy. But some Western scholars (e.g., Kasfir) interpret Trowell's art-teaching strategy at the Makerere Art School as “a conscious rejection of the model put forward by European modernism [that] set Makerere on a course which, while later redirected, earned it an early reputation among outsiders as an old-fashioned late-colonial institution” (Kasfir 1999: 142). Trowell's outdated ideas, which mixed race and culture, might have been useful during the colonial era when African visual arts were being protected from foreign art styles, but as, Nyerere stated,The establishment in the 1960s of the National Development Corporation (NDC) and its subsidiaries—for example, the Small Industries Development Corporation and National Arts, which later became HANDICO—marked the first national initiative to promote visual arts in Tanzania. According to Yves Goscinny (2004: 55), Tingatinga entered into an agreement with the NDC in 1971 to sell his paintings to them after Director of Operations Michael Berger noticed the popularity of paintings from the Tingatinga school among diplomats and expatriates living and working in Dar es Salaam.Tingatinga's works were subsequently exported to art dealers throughout the world by HANDICO. Today, according to Tanzania's ambassador to South Korea, Matilda Masuka (Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation 2020) the market for Tingatinga paintings is still significant in that country. In Hamburg, Germany, Captain Felix Lorenz appears to be the leading dealer of Tingatinga paintings. In Dar es Salaam, the Swiss ambassador's residence contains a collection of some of the earliest Tingatinga paintings, which were donated by a Swiss diplomat, Aldo Matteucci, at the end of his tenure.The largest collection of modern Makonde sculpture is said to be at the Makonde Club in Osaka, Japan. In Germany, Max Mohl and Lorenz are the leading dealers. Most overseas collectors, however, come to Tanzania to collect sculpture from sculptors they personally know.HANDICO used to have a gallery of sculptures that were considered part of the national heritage. However, changes in management affected its gallery efficiency, and in 1999, when HANDICO and other parastals were reviewed, it was privatized and became a company called Mikono (“Hands”). By this time, art from Tanzania was already widely acclaimed in many parts of the art world. Tingatinga and modern Makonde sculpture had become entrenched in the world's art scene. However, Tanzania now lacked a government agency that could coordinate the activities of artists.State support for the arts in Tanzania was first demonstrated by the establishment of the National Arts Council and National Music Council in the 1970s. The two councils were then merged in 1984 by Parliamentary Act No. 23 of 1984. The combined council was assigned responsibility for coordinating the activities of visual and performing artists, including film and theater arts. Today the National Arts Council is under the Ministry of Information, Culture, Arts, and Sports, whose minister appoints the executive secretary who heads the council. Tanzania also has arts federations for visual arts, music, film, and theater arts, each chaired by a president elected by its members, who normally come from private associations. The four federation presidents report to the executive secretary of the council. All public activities related to the arts—such as beauty contests, art exhibitions, dance competitions, and film festivals—must get a permit from the council. Art societies wishing to gain government recognition must register with the council. To receive privileges such as permits to exhibit outside the country or to open art-related businesses, individual artists, too, must register with the council.The chairperson of the council used to be appointed by the president, but now anyone interested can apply, and the minister confirms the appointment. Board members are shortlisted by the executive secretary and confirmed by the minister. Most board members have backgrounds in fine and performing arts and serve three-year terms. As a government agency, the board is allowed to charge fees (e.g., for registration and exhibition) for some of its services. However, unlike the Arts Council of Britain or the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, which award grants to artists for specific projects, the Tanzanian National Arts Council has no legal authority to fund the arts. This omission was keenly felt by artists until the end of the twentieth century, when a new arts fund was established.The Tanzania Culture Trust Fund, commonly called “Mfuko,” was formed in 1998 as a joint venture between Sweden and Tanzania and was funded through a Swedish government grant of 800 million Tanzanian shillings (approx. US$1.2 million) and started operating in 1999. The Tanzanian government injected 40 million shillings during the fund's one decade of existence (Msuya 2014: 72). It had six departments: visual arts, performing arts, language and literature, film and audiovisual, cultural heritage, and culture industry activities. Approved projects received grants after presentation of proposals, and a special day was set aside to showcase the products that were created through the grant.Life achievement awards in the form of a letter of appreciation, cash, a certificate, and a trophy, known as the Zeze Award, were annually presented to outstanding artists from 1999 onward. Among the visual artists who received the award are Ernest Mtaya (1999), who taught art to children through television; Elias Jengo (2000), art educator and practicing artist; Sam Ntiro (posthumously, 2001), pioneer of contemporary Tanzanian art; Edward Saidi Tingatinga (posthumously, 2002); Sister Jean Pruitt (2003) founder of the defunct Nyumba ya Sanaa and Vipaji Foundation; and Shariffa Mohamed, a Heena artist of Zanzibar (Fig. 10). Candidates for the award are nominated by a jury of local visual artists in both mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar. Many marginalized artists and craftspeople benefited tremendously from the fund. In Zanzibar, for instance, a group of Heena women artists were beneficiaries. According to Msuya (2014), the trust was wound down in 2012 after an unfavorable evaluation report. As of early 2021, a new artistic trust is in the offing but is still waiting to be discussed in the Tanzanian Parliament.The Tanzanian government has long had a deep interest in public arts policy. This led to the establishment of COSOTA in 1999 to help artists protect their works from illegal copying and piracy. COSOTA initially operated under the Ministry of Industries and Trade, but artists in 2020 mobilized to persuade the government to place it under the Ministry of Information, Culture, Arts, and Sports. Prior to the late 1990s, COSOTA would have seemed trivial as art institutions were then managed