WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Friday, April 14 at 5:30 pm, the Clark Art Institute's Research and Academic Program hosts a talk by Joshua I. Cohen (City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center), who examines African modernisms in the Francophone contexts of decolonization and the global Cold War. 

 

The lecture looks at the practices of three Mande artists from Francophone West Africa: the Guinean poet, musician, dramatist, and choreographer Fodéba Keita (1921-1969); the Malian studio photographer Seydou Keita (1921-2001); and the Senegalese painter Souleymane Keita (1947-2014).

 

According to a press release:

 

Joshua I. Cohen is an associate professor of art history at The City College of New York. He specializes in twentieth-century francophone West Africa, southern Africa, and connections to Europe and the United States. His areas of research include African and "global" modernisms, discourses of "primitivism," racial identity, and "renaissance" in art, as well as national socialist cultural politics, West African ballet performance, postcolonial studies, and museum studies. His first book, The "Black Art" Renaissance: African Sculpture and Modernism across Continents, received honorable mention for the Modernist Studies Association First Book Prize. His writing has appeared in The Art Bulletin, African Arts, Journal of Black Studies, and publications from the Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou, among others. In 2020, he co-organized an international conference with Foad Torshizi and Vazira Zamindar, "Art History, Postcolonialism, and the Global Turn." His current book project, tentatively titled Art of the Opaque: African Modernisms, Decolonization, and the Cold War, is a critical study of modernism between Africa and its diaspora in the context of decolonization and the global Cold War.

 

Presented in person in the Clark's auditorium. Free, with a reception in the Manton Research Center's Reading Room starting at 5 pm. No registration is required.