The ACRAH/CAA2026 panel will be Excavating Race in the Archive
This session will remote/hybrid on Thursday, February 19, 2026 at 11:00am – 12:30pm local Chicago time. If you are in Chicago you can attend in person at the Hilton Chicago – 3rd Floor – Williford B.
Check out the full session description here: CAA2026
The ACRAH Business Meeting will be held in the same room on Thursday, February 19, 2026 from 1:00pm-2:00pm local Chicago time.
Our new article has been published in kritische berichte.
Abstract:
This essay outlines the foundations and aims of Critical Race Art History, a methodological approach that examines how race operates in art and visual culture. Through case studies of artworks ranging from 18th-century porcelain to contemporary art, the authors reveal how racial hierarchies are naturalized through representation. They argue that race functions as a structuring visual logic and call for a critical reexamination of art history’s disciplinary assumptions.
Check it out here: https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/kb/article/view/113082
Jacqueline & Camara
ACRAH’s co-directors Jacqueline Francis and Camara Holloway will be presenting as a part of this series. See below.
REGISTER: https://www.khist.uzh.ch/de/institut/registration.html
Focusing on Europe, where anti-racist initiatives and practices are still little established within universities and cultural institutions, this lecture series discusses how art history can assume a more self-critical stance to actively counter racism in all its forms. In what ways can anti-racist and decolonial efforts be fostered through art historical research and teaching, as well as the contextualisation of artworks or collections? What are necessary interventions or existing best practices within the discipline of art history in order to critically engage with racist representations or historical attributions? To what extent can the use of appropriate language prevent the entrenchment of stereotypes and prejudices? And how can debates on inclusion and diversity be sustainably incorporated within academia, museums and art academies? These and other questions will be addressed in the course of the lecture series by art historians, curators, art critics and art educators.
Programme:
03.10.: Is Art History Racist?
Anne Lafont (Professor in art history and créolités, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris)
[English]
10.10.: Working Towards a Critical Race Art History
Association for Critical Race Art History (ACRAH) – Jacqueline Francis (Dean, Humanities & Sciences Division, California College of the Arts, San Francisco) & Camara Dia Holloway (Project Manager, Romare Bearden Digital Catalogue Raisonné, Wildenstein Plattner Institute, New York)
[English]
*Online
31.10.: «Gastarbeiter» aus der Türkei und die Immobilität der weissen Kunstgeschichte Westdeutschlands
Gürsoy Doğtaş (Kunsthistoriker und Kurator, Forschungsstipendiat 2024/25 für Curatorial Studies, Städelschule und Goethe Universität, Frankfurt a.M.)
[Deutsch]
07.11.: Cause and Effect: On the Audience of Andrea Fraser at Luma Westbau
Brit Barton (artist and art writer, Zürich/Chicago)
[English]
21.11.: Antirassistische Strategien in Museen und kulturellen Institutionen
Gespräch mit Tasnim Baghdadi (Co-Leiterin Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich), Eric Otieno Sumba (Autor und Forscher, Redakteur am Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin), Marilyn Umurungi (Kunst- und Kulturforscherin, Co-Kuratorin Schweizerisches Nationalmuseum, Zürich)
[Deutsch]
*Cabaret Voltaire, Spiegelgasse 1, 8001 Zürich
05.12.: Documenting Colonial Toxicity
Samia Henni (Assistant Professor of History and Theory of Architecture and Director of Graduate Studies, McGill University, Montreal)
[English]
*Online
12.12.: Invisible Man. Race und Fototheorie
Christopher Nixon (Philosoph und Komparatist, Hamburg)
[Deutsch]
***
Konzept und Organisation / Concept and organization
CARAH – Collective for Anti-Racist Art History
Daniel Berndt, Nadine Helm, Nadine Jirka, Charlotte Matter, Rosa Sancarlo
Weitere informationen / Further information
www.khist.uzh.ch/de/research/projects/carah.html
Die Vortragsreihe ist kostenlos und öffentlich zugänglich. Die einzelnen Vorträge werden auf Deutsch oder Englisch gehalten (siehe Programm). Einige Sitzungen finden virtuell statt. Alle Vorträge werden online mit Untertitelung übertragen. Für Fragen und Bedürfnisse zur Barrierefreiheit, sowie für die Anmeldung zur Online-Teilnahme schreiben Sie bitte an CARAH: antirassismus@khist.uzh.ch
The lecture series is free and open to the public. Individual sessions will be held in German or English (see program). Some sessions will take place online. All lectures will be streamed online with subtitles. For questions and accessibility needs, and to register for online participation, please write to CARAH: antirassismus@khist.uzh.ch
Mit der Unterstützung von / With the support of:
The ACRAH/CAA2024 session will be Critical Race Art History and the Archive.
The panel will be held on Zoom on Thursday, February 15th, at 2:30pm CST.
If you are attending the conference in person at the Hilton Chicago, you have the option to view the session in the Marquette Room on the 3rd floor.
Session Abstract
In Subject to Display (2009), Jennifer A. González asserts that “the collection and display of bodies, images, and artifacts in museums and elsewhere is a primary means by which a nation tells the story of its past and locates the cultures of its citizens in the present.“ In this session, contemporary archivists’ discuss their approaches to telling the narratives of racial identification and racialization—past and present. What has been collected and how has that material been interpreted? What questions do they bring to institutional systems of classification? How do they create space and cede power so that marginalized communities can access resources that support their created and managed archives? In what ways have the concerns of the humanities—analysis, interpretation, argumentation—been mainstreamed into digital humanities practice in the scope of critical race art history?
Check out our presenters here CAA2024
Recorded portions of the session will be available to conference registrants until April 17, 2024.
Register for CAA2024: https://www.collegeart.org/programs/conference/conference2024/registration
ACRAH will be at College Art Association Annual Conference in 2024.
We are having a virtual session, “Critical Race Art History and the Archive” that is soliciting papers.
Abstract:
In Subject to Display (2009), Jennifer A. González asserts that “the collection and display of bodies, images, and artifacts in museums and elsewhere is a primary means by which a nation tells the story of its past and locates the cultures of its citizens in the present.“ In this session, contemporary archivists’ discuss their approaches to telling the narratives of racial identification and racialization—past and present. What has been collected and how has that material been interpreted? What questions do they bring to institutional systems of classification? How do they create space and cede power so that marginalized communities can access resources that support their created and managed archives? In what ways have the concerns of the humanities—analysis, interpretation, argumentation—been mainstreamed into digital humanities practice in the scope of critical race art history?
Submit your proposal here: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2024/webprogrampreliminary/Session12882.html
Deadline: August 31, 2023
Check out the full CAA conference call for participation and guidelines to submit here: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2024/webprogrampreliminary/meeting.html
The Art, Art History, and Film Department at Boston College invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track Assistant Professor in the field of Modern and Contemporary Art of Europe and the Americas to begin July 1, 2020.
The department seeks candidates with robust and innovative research agendas and a commitment to undergraduate teaching. Applicants should specialize in 20th-century art and be able to teach courses that address art of the 21st century. The appointee will teach five courses each academic year, including an introduction to art history from the Renaissance to Modern and upper-level courses in the candidate’s areas of specialization. Of particular interest are candidates who can teach courses in one or more of the following areas: theory and methods of art history; history of architecture; and museum history, theory, and practice. The department also welcomes candidates whose research and teaching interests may include analysis of gender studies, critical race theory, post-colonial studies, and disability studies.
Faculty members have the opportunity to pursue exhibition projects at the McMullen Museum of Art and to incorporate Boston-area museums in their teaching. The department also encourages interdisciplinary instruction and teaching in the Core Curriculum.
Boston College is a Jesuit, Catholic university that strives to integrate research excellence with a foundational commitment to formative liberal arts education. The University encourages applications from candidates committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive academic community.
Applicants should submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, teaching philosophy, sample of recent scholarship, course syllabi, and three letters of recommendation by November 1, 2019. PhD expected by start date. All materials must be submitted to Interfolio: https://apply.interfolio.com/66288.
The following session for the 2018 College Art Association Annual Conference in Los Angeles, February, 21 – 24, 2018 is sponsored by the Historians of German, Scandinavian, and Central European Art (HGSCEA). They especially welcome submissions from ACRAH members.
Critical Race Art Histories in Germany, Scandinavia, and Central Europe
Chair: Allison Morehead, Queen’s University
Critical race theory, which entered art history through postcolonial analyses of representations of black bodies, has remained relatively peripheral to art historical studies of Germany, Scandinavia, and Central Europe, whose colonial histories differ from those of countries such as Britain, France, and the United States. At the same time, art historical examinations of white supremacy in the Nazi period are frequently sectioned off from larger histories of claims to white superiority and privilege. Centering critical race theory in the art histories of Germany, Scandinavia, and Central Europe, this panel will consider representations of race in the broadest of terms — including “white makings of whiteness,” in the words of Richard Dyer. We invite papers that together will explore the imagination and construction of a spectrum of racial and ethnic identities, as well as marginalization and privilege, in and through German, Scandinavian, and Central European art, architecture, and visual culture in any period. How have bodies been racialized through representation, and how might representations of spaces, places, and land — the rural or wilderness vs. the urban, for instance — also be critically analyzed in terms of race? Priority will be given to papers that consider the intersections of race with other forms of subjectivity and identity.
Please send 250-word proposals, a completed session participation proposal form, and a short academic CV to Allison Morehead at morehead@queensu.ca by 14 August 2017.
Please consult the guidelines at the end of the CAA Call for Participation (http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/call-for-participation.pdf) for further details.
ACRAH 