A proverb from Ghana declares that:
A woman is a flower in a garden; her husband is the fence around it'."

African art has a long and surprisingly controversial history. Up until recently, the designation "African" was usually only bestowed on the arts of Black Africa, i.e., the cultures and peoples living in sub-Saharan Africa. The non-black peoples of North, the blacks of the Horn of Africa, as well as the art of Ancient Egypt, generally were not included under the rubric of African art. Recently, however, there has been a movement among African art historians and other scholars to include the visual culture of these areas, since all the cultures that produced them, in fact, are located within the geographic boundaries of the African continent.

The notion is that by including all African cultures and their visual culture in African art, laypersons will gain a greater understanding of the continent's cultural diversity. Since there was often a confluence of traditional African, Islamic and Mediterranean cultures, scholars have found that drawing distinct divisions among Islam, ancient Egypt, the Mediterranean, and traditional African societies makes little sense.

Finally, the arts of the people of the African diaspora, prevalent in Brazil, the Caribbean, and the southeastern United States,
have also begun to be included in the study of African art as products of the African diaspora.