Tag: African American Art

“Enduring Legacy: Conversations on Romare Bearden” Zoom webinar series in May

Bearden with Betty Blayton and Children’s Art Carnival students; “Romare Bearden: The Prevalence of Ritual” at the Studio Museum in Harlem, 1972; Romare Bearden Papers [ysqdockk], The Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc.

We hope you can join us for an exciting series running throughout May 2024 hosted by the Wildenstein Plattner Institute: 

ENDURING LEGACY: Conversations on Romare Bearden 

This event series features three speakers whose scholarship and practice engage with Bearden’s formulation of the visual world. 

Curating Romare Bearden with Charlie Farrell 

Wednesday May 8, 2024 at 1 pm

Registration link

Charlie Farrell will discuss the exhibition Romare Bearden: Resonances at the Saint Louis Art Museum. The show features Bearden’s important collage, Summertime (1967), alongside other collage works from the Museum’s collection. The aim is to trace Bearden’s influence and relationships with other artists, grounding him in a continuum of Black creativity. 

Situating the Projections with Anne Monahan 

Wednesday May 15, 2024 at 1 pm

Registration link

Anne Monahan will discuss her chapter on Bearden from her manuscript in progress, “A Usable Past”: Race, Figuration, and Politics in the 1960s. Her research on Bearden reconsiders his breakthrough Projections exhibition in 1964, exploring his turn to photomontage, how race factored into the works’ reception, and the impact of this work on a rising generation of artists of color.

Conceptualizing Black Joy with Kahlil Robert Irving

Wednesday May 22, 2024 at 1 pm

Registration link

Kahlil Robert Irving will discuss his artistic practice, including the pieces that were included in the recent exhibition, In Common: New Approaches with Romare Bearden, held at the New School in New York City. The show featured the work of six contemporary artists alongside that of Bearden.


These conversations commemorate Bearden’s continuing impact thirty-six years after his passing. The insight of his work resonates with our present moment and contemporary questions of race in America. More information can be found on our website.

JOB OPPORTUNITY: Assistant Professor, Tenure Track—Latin American and Latinx/e History and/or African American Art History—San Francisco State University (application review begins Feb. 1, 2024)

Department/School Name: School of Art
Area of Specialization: Art History
Rank of Appointment: Assistant Professor

San Francisco State University, School of Art seeks applicants for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Art History with a specialization in Latin American and Latinx/e art history and/or African American art history. Position begins August 2024.


The mission of San Francisco State University is to create an environment for learning that promotes appreciation of scholarship, freedom, human diversity, and the cultural mosaic of the City of San Francisco and the Bay Area; to promote excellence in instruction and intellectual accomplishment; and to provide broadly accessible higher education for residents of the region, state, the nation, and the world. Ph.D. required. Salary commensurate with qualifications. Application review begins 2/1/2024 and continues until filled.


Send cover letter describing research interests and relating your experience to the required qualifications, a current CV, a statement on how your teaching and creative work align with the commitment of the School of Art to foster an inclusive and diverse academic community, writing sample, sample syllabi, and contact information of three references letters of recommendation to be requested later. Access application portal at: https://careers.pageuppeople.com/873/sf/en-us/job/533826/assistant-professor-art-history-school-of-art

JOB: Asst Prof, African American/African Diaspora/African at University of Pittsburgh

The Department of History of Art and Architecture (HAA) in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh seeks to appoint an Assistant Professor (tenure-stream) of African American, African Diasporic, or African art and/or architecture (chronology open) with a start date of September 1, 2024, pending budgetary approval.

Applicants should submit a cover letter (1-2 pages), current CV, writing sample (15-20 pages), teaching portfolio (12 pages max), as diversity statement (1-2 pages) via Talent Center, as well as 3 confidential letters of recommendation emailed to Chair and Administrative Officer (see job description for details).

For further details about the position, or to apply, please follow this link: cfopitt.taleo.net/careersection/pitt_faculty_external/jobdetail.ftl?job=23007761.

JOB: Asst Prof, African American/African Diaspora at Rollins College

The Department of Art and Art History at Rollins College seeks an Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History (1800-present), tenure-track, with a research and teaching focus in African American Art History or the African diaspora, which may include the Caribbean. Ph.D. and teaching experience required. Especially welcome are applicants with interests in justice, interdisciplinary teaching, and the development of courses addressing cross-cultural themes. Preference will be given to candidates from marginalized communities and applicants with experience in object-based teaching, community engagement, and/or digital humanities. Opportunities exist for robust partnership with curricular programs in African and African American Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, American Studies, and Sexuality, Women’s & Gender Studies, as well as with the Rollins Museum of Art, which includes the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art. Community engagement opportunities are available, including in the Hannibal Square historic neighborhood, nearby Eatonville, and with the Zora Neale Hurston Museum. The Morse Museum of American Art also provides opportunity for collaboration and on-site teaching. Duties include 3/3 teaching load, scholarly research and publications, advising and other service to the department and the college.

Rollins College is a comprehensive liberal arts college located just north of Orlando, FL, a diverse metropolitan community with a thriving economic and cultural scene. Nearby Orlando International Airport provides easy access to U.S. and international destinations. The college emphasizes innovative and quality teaching in small classes and ranks number one among 121 Southern master’s-level universities in the annual rankings of “America’s Best Colleges,” released by U.S. News & World Report. Please visit the college website at www.rollins.edu.

To learn more and apply, visit:

https://jobs.rollins.edu/en-us/job/493540/assistant-professor-of-modern-and-contemporary-art-history-1800present

JOB: Assistant Professor in African American and/or Africa Diaspora Arts at Boston University

Boston University’s Department of History of Art & Architecture invites applicants for a renewable four-year tenure track position, beginning AY 2024-25, as Assistant Professor in African American and/or Africa Diaspora Arts, with a geographic focus on the United States, the Caribbean, and/or South or Central America. This is a joint position with Boston University’s African American & Black Diaspora Studies Program. We seek exceptional scholars and teachers, with expertise in modern and/or contemporary art and visual culture, whose work incorporates diverse perspectives and critical approaches. Boston University and the Department actively seek diversity in the student and faculty ranks, recognizing that pluralism of experience deepens the intellectual endeavor.

The successful candidate will offer graduate and undergraduate courses in History of Art and Architecture and African American & Black Diaspora Studies; conduct research in their area(s) of specialization; and advise and mentor graduate and undergraduate students. Salary competitive and commensurate with experience. PhD required and publications preferred.

Please submit in PDF or Word form to AcademicJobsOnline (https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/25530) and addressed to Professor Ross Barrett, Search Committee Chair (rcb@bu.edu): 1) a curriculum vitae; 2) three recommenders’ contact information; 3) a cover letter that describes your research accomplishments and plans, your teaching principles, and approaches, and how your research, teaching, and/or other activities contribute to diversity objectives. Review of applications begins November 15, 2023.

Boston University expects excellence in teaching and in research and is committed to building a culturally, racially, and ethnically diverse scholarly community.

BU conducts a background check on all final candidates for certain faculty and staff positions. The background check includes contacting the final candidate’s current and previous employer(s) to ask whether, in the last seven years, there has been a substantiated finding of misconduct violating that employer’s applicable sexual misconduct policies. To implement this process, the University requires a final candidate to complete and sign the form entitled “Authorization to Release Information” after execution of an offer letter.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, military service, pregnancy or pregnancy-related condition, or because of marital, parental, or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We are a VEVRAA Federal Contractor.

LEC: “Race Matters: Cultural Politics in the 1960s” webinar series on Zoom in September

We hope you can join us for this exciting webinar series hosted by the WPI, Race Matters: Cultural Politics in the 1960s

The 1960s was a tumultuous moment in American history as racial equality movements propelled sweeping changes to the body politic. This critical juncture in the nation’s race relations captured the public’s attention as the media delivered the unfolding drama to their doorsteps. The turbulent racial climate spurred the artist’s Romare Bearden’s pivotal turn to collage and return to Black figuration. 

This webinar series presents new insights into the work of Bearden and his contemporaries. His fellow artists, who came from diverse racial backgrounds, joined Bearden in responding to the tenor of the times and tackling Black subject matter and/or racial themes in their work. The series will expand our understanding of how racial concerns were articulated during this watershed decade.

About the Webinars:

Tomorrow I May Be Far Away — with Bridget R. Cooks

Thursday, September 7, 1pm ET 

Register here

In this talk, art historian Bridget R. Cooks addresses Romare Bearden’s ability to engage the Black and mainstream art worlds during the 1960s and ’70s. During this time, his art was revered as exemplary of American art and Black art in different institutional contexts delineated by race. Cooks discusses how Bearden navigated his presence in both worlds through his art and exhibitions.

Bridget R. Cooks is a scholar and curator of American art. She serves as Chancellor’s Fellow and Professor of African American Studies and Art History at the University of California, Irvine. She is most well-known as the author of the book, Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum.

Romare Bearden, the South, and the Southern Black Arts Movement— with James Smethurst

Thursday, September 14, 1pm ET

Register here

This talk will discuss the place of the South, what Romare Bearden described as the “homeland of my imagination” in Bearden’s work. It will also consider the impact of Bearden and his work on the Black Arts Movement in the South during the 1960s and 1970s. 

James Smethurst is a Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946; The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s; The African American Roots of Modernism; Brick City Vanguard: Amiri Baraka, Black Music, Black Modernity; and Behold the Land: A History of the Black Arts Movement in the South. 

Bearden and Harlem in the 1960s — with Maya Harakawa 

Thursday, September 21, 1pm ET

Register here

This talk explores Romare Bearden’s evolving relationship with Harlem in the 1960s, a decade when Bearden depicted Harlem in his art, joined the neighborhood’s cultural council, curated exhibitions in Harlem, and protested reductive curatorial approaches to Harlem’s history. In addition to discussing Bearden, the talk will also focus on the artistic landscape of 1960s Harlem and highlight the neighborhood’s role in defining artistic practice at a moment of profound social and artistic change. 

Maya Harakawa (she/her) is assistant professor of art history at the University of Toronto. A specialist in art of the African Diaspora in the United States, she is currently writing a book on art and Harlem in the 1960s.

Witness: Rauschenberg Reflects the Tumultuous 1960s — with Helen Hsu

Thursday, September 28, 1pm ET

Register here

Deploying methods of collage, innovated with solvent transfer and screenprinting techniques, Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) appropriated from, intervened in, and disrupted the ever proliferating mass media imagescape. “Witness” presents examples of the artist’s work from the 1960s that crystallize the decade’s cultural reckonings and historical crises. Rauschenberg’s remaking and reinvention of collective visual sources invites viewers to critically engage with shifting conditions of recognition and obscurity, recasting the encounter with an artwork as a form of creative participation.

Helen Hsu is the Associate Curator for Research at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. She was formerly an assistant curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and is an alumna of Stanford University.

CFP: “The Black Commonwealth” at CAA2024

The Black Commonwealth
Co-Chairs: julia elizabeth neal (University of Michigan), Janell Blackmon-Pryor (Bowie State University)
Submit:https://caa.confex.com/caa/2024/webprogrampreliminary/Session12517.html
Session will present: In Person

Investigations of place have prompted radical reconsiderations of social and artistic geographies of visual culture. It absorbs and reflects psychosocial views and cultural relationships between communities and sites. Place is discursive across the disciplines: Tim Creswell, an anthropogeographer, situates place as a “meaningful category,” whereas Lucy Lippard, a feminist curator, describes it as “the locus of desire,” and artist Renée Green discursively engages notions of place and site-specificity in “Peripatetic at ‘Home’.”

With the objective to contribute to increasing microhistories–local, transnational, and global–reframing art historical inquiry, this panel will convene around Pennsylvania and its role within Black art production. A colony, the second state to join the Union, and a commonwealth implicated by the myths of the nation, Pennsylvania is a microcosm of the United States. How does it shape histories of artists from Henry Ossawa Tanner and Meta Warrick Vaux Fuller to Raymond Saunders, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Benjamin Patterson, and more, from the past to now?

We invite submissions related to Pennyslvania’s role in the profiles, practices, networks, institutions, and histories, of artists of African descent from the 19th to 21st centuries. Graduate students, adjunct, tenure-track and tenured professors, curators and arts cultural workers are encouraged to present.

Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

* Placemaking
* Politics of Identity and Blackness
* Gender Politics
* Respectability Politics and Whiteness Studies
* Andrew Carnegie and Institutions
* Labor Histories and Art
* Philadelphia, Pittsburgh
* Deindustrialization
* Archives and Documentary Histories
* Museums, Galleries and Race

Deadline is August 31, 2023

Zoom: “Revisiting the Spiral Group”

Register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/revisiting-the-spiral-group-tickets-677473781317

“Revisiting the Spiral Group,” will be hosted by the Romare Bearden Foundation on Thursday, July 27th, at 6pm EST on Zoom. The event commemorates the 60th anniversary of the founding of Spiral, an African American artists’ collective co-founded by Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, Norman Lewis, and Hale Woodruff. 

A conversation with Richard Mayhew, the oldest living member of Spiral, and Courtney J. Martin, the director of the Yale Center for British Art will be moderated by Camara Holloway, project manager for the Romare Bearden catalogue raisonné at the Wildenstein Plattner Institute and ACRAH co-director.

JOB: Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art @ SAAM

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is seeking a dynamic curator to oversee the museum’s collection of African American art, which includes more than 2500 artworks by 270 African American artists. The collection ranges from the 19th through the 21st centuries, with deep holdings by Edmonia Lewis, Bannister, Duncanson, Tanner, William H. Johnson, and work by self-taught and contemporary artists, as well as James Hampton’s Throne of the Third Heaven and an untitled verse jar by Dave Drake. The newly endowed position of Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art will develop collection strategies, exhibitions and publications, advise fellows and interns, and, notably, collaborate with the curatorial team to reinstall and reinterpret the permanent collection galleries.

The ideal candidate will have an M.A. (PhD. Preferred) in art history or a field related to African American studies, as well as knowledge of African American art, at least three years of museum experience, and a track record of innovative exhibitions and publications. The position is at the IS-13 level, with a salary range of $112,015-145,617.

To apply, go to: https://americanart.si.edu/about/careers/curator-african-american-art-13

JOB: Visiting Asst Prof, Contemporary @ University of Florida

The School of Art + Art History seeks a one-year Visiting Assistant Professor in Contemporary Art. The successful candidate will teach a 2-3 load of courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels including introductory survey courses and advanced classes in the field of specialty, and actively participate in our learning community. May be renewed for one additional year (nine months) based on the program’s needs.

The University of Florida College of the Arts intends to be a transformative community, responding to and generating paradigmatic shifts in the arts and beyond. As artists and scholars, we embrace the complexity of our evolving human experience and seek to empower our students and faculty to shape that experience fearlessly through critical study, creative practice, and provocation. We seek a colleague who identifies as a change-maker. We seek a colleague who will prepare students to access and unsettle centers of power in a radically changing world. We seek a colleague who will position emerging artists and researchers as catalysts for equity on local and global levels.

https://explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/526419/visiting-assistant-professor-in-contemporary-art

SCHOOL OF ART + ART HISTORY: Organized within the College of the Arts, the School of Art + Art History nurtures a culture of critical inquiry in our scholarly and creative work. Our educational mission is to empower each student with knowledge, skills, and insight to engage thoughtfully with our changing world. The SA+AH believes that art, design, and scholarship are critical to our local, university, regional, national, and international communities. We pursue positive transformation and impact through socially engaged, local and global education, research, and creative works. Our community asks challenging questions, takes risks, and strives for excellence through an interdisciplinary, inclusive, and often collaborative practice. School of Art + Art History faculty publish, curate, and exhibit widely and internationally. They bring their scholarship and production into their teaching, offering innovative, engaged learning experiences to their students. We foster a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community through mutual respect and acceptance, assuming the best in others to enable a culture where everyone can flourish. Degree programs include the BA, BFA, MA, MFA, and PhD. Areas of study include art education, art history, design, museum studies, and studio art. The school has 400 undergraduate students enrolled in our majors and 190 graduate students in our residential programs and online art education MA. Also a part of the School of Art + Art History are the 4Most Gallery and the University Galleries—the Gary R. Libby University Gallery, the Gary R. Libby Focus Gallery, and Grinter Gallery — which provide exhibition space for contemporary art, including student work. The University of Florida is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges and the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. The art education program is accredited by NCATE. For more information, visit www.arts.ufl.edu/art.

THE COLLEGE OF THE ARTS: The mission of the College of the Arts is to be a transformative community, responding to and generating paradigmatic shifts in the arts and beyond.  We achieve the university’s mission by training professionals and educating students as artists and scholars, while developing their capacities for critical study, creative practice, and provocation.  The College offers baccalaureate, masters, and doctoral degrees. Approximately 1,700 students are pursuing majors in degrees offered by the College of the Arts under the direction of 130 faculty members in its three accredited schools— the School of Art + Art History, the School of Music, and the School of Theatre + Dance, and in the Center for Arts in Medicine, the Digital Worlds Institute, and the Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship. In addition, the college comprises the University Galleries, and the University level of the New World School of the Arts in Miami. 

The University of Florida: The University of Florida is a comprehensive learning institution built on a land grant foundation, ranked one of the top five best public universities in the nation in U.S. News & World Report. We are The Gator Nation, a diverse community dedicated to excellence in education and research and shaping a better future for Florida, the nation and the world. Our mission is to enable our students to lead and influence the next generation and beyond for economic, cultural and societal benefit. UF is a graduate research institution with more than 50,000 students and membership in the prestigious Association of American Universities. Gainesville, which is consistently ranked as one of the nation’s most livable cities, is located midway between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. Together, the University and the community comprise the educational, medical and cultural center of North Central Florida, with outstanding resources such as the University of Florida Performing Arts (Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, the Squitieri Studio Theatre, the Baughman Center, University Auditorium), the Harn Museum of Art, the Florida Museum of Natural History and in the community, the Hippodrome State Theatre and Dance Alive National Ballet.