Reframing Blackness: What's Black about "History of Art"? with Alayo Akinkugbe

'Thorough, accessible, essential' ~ Katy Hessel, author of THE STORY OF ART WITHOUT MEN

Alayo Akinkugbe is a contributing editor and writes the column 'Black Gazes' for AnOther Magazine. She was awarded a curatorial research grant by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art for the exhibition Entangled Pasts: Art Colonialism and Change at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Alayo is an art historian who graduated from the University of Cambridge with a BA in History of Art and an MA in Curating the Art Museum from the Courtauld Institute of Art. She was on the advisory panel and contributed to the book African Artists: From 1882 to Now, published by Phaidon in 2021, and has written for publications including Dazed, Tate Etc. and The World of Interiors.

She has founded and runs the Instagram platform @ABlackHistoryofArt, which highlights Black artists, sitters, curators and thinkers from art history and the present day; and hosts the podcast A Shared Gaze.

Alayo joins us for her first book, Reframing Blackness.

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

In Reframing Blackness, 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. It is a testament to the importance of not only curating knowledge but challenging systems of knowing that have shaped our world view thus far.