Reframing Blackness: What’s Black about “History of Art”?

Description

Since the inception of mainstream art history, Blackness has been distinctly ignored.

In Reframing Blackness, art historian and founder of @ABlackHistoryOfArt, Alayo Akinkugbe challenges this void.

Exploring the presentation of Black figures in Western art, as well as Blackness in museums, in feminist art movements and in the curriculum, Alayo unveils an overlooked but integral part of our collective art history.

Refreshing and accessible, this promises to start a much-needed conversation in culture and education.

Art historian Alayo Akinkugbe runs the Instagram platform @ABlackHistoryofArt, which highlights Black artists, sitters, curators and thinkers from art history and the present day. She also hosts the podcast, A Shared Gaze, and is a contributing editor and writes the column “Black Gazes” for AnOther magazine. Reframing Blackness is her first book.

“Akinkugbe is a brilliant new writer and thinker challenging art history. This book is urgent, essential, accessible and it needs to be on every art history reading list.” — Bernardine Evaristo

“Akinkugbe is a brilliant new writer and thinker challenging art history. This book is urgent, essential, accessible and it needs to be on every art history reading list.” Bernardine Evaristo, Professor of Creative Writing, Brunel University of London, and author of Girl, Woman, Other

“A sparkling debut. Bold, eloquent, personal and clear-eyed, Alayo Akinkugbe is a major new voice in writing about art, museums and culture. This book will shift your frames of reference, expand your canvas, and give you hope for the future – changing how you look at art while also making you look again at your ways of seeing” Dan Hicks, author of The Brutish Museums