Talk Description:
“The (Curious) Progress of Black British Artists”
Historically, the writing of Black British art histories was often a relatively uncomplicated, matter, mainly concerned with righting the wrongs of systemic omission - correcting or addressing the widespread absences of Black artists from British art history. This making visible of marginalized, excluded, or not widely known histories was what characterized the first substantial attempt at chronicling a Black British history, Rasheed Araeen’s 1989 exhibition, The Other Story. Now, nearly 35 years later, a very significant number of Black British artists can be regarded as establishment figures, adorned with a range of honors conferred on behalf of the late Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the present monarch, His Majesty King Charles III. What does it mean for so many Black artists to have made the transition from excluded and marginalized figures to artists of the establishment? In the mid 20th century, Nigerian sculptor Ben Enwonwu was awarded an MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire). Sixty year later, though the British Empire pretty much no longer exists, Enwonwu has been joined by an ever-increasing list of Black artists so recognized with MBEs and other awards. This represents, perhaps, the (Curious) progress of Black British artists.
Eddie Chambers is the holder of the David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professorship in Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. He has been professionally involved in the visual arts for four decades first as an artist, then as a writer of art criticism and art curator. More recently, since the early 2000s moving into academia, first as a Visiting Professor at Emory University, Atlanta, before going on, in 2010 to a position at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his PhD at Goldsmiths College University of London, working under Professor Sarat Maharaj. His external examiner was Professor Stuart Hall. Chamber’s doctorate concerned itself with press and other responses to a new generation of Black British artists who emerged in the 1980s. His broad areas of scholarship are the art and art history of the African Diaspora. Chambers has written several books, namely Run Through the Jungle: Selected Writings by Eddie Chambers, London: IVA - The institute of International Visual Arts, 1999; Things Done Change: The Cultural Politics of Recent Black Artists in Britain, Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi Editions, 2012; Black Artists in British Art: A History Since the 1950s, I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd, London and New York, Series: International Library of Visual Culture, 2014, reprinted, September 2015; Roots & Culture: Cultural Politics in the Making of Black Britain, I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd, London and New York, Series: International Library of Visual Culture, 2017; World is Africa: Writings on Diaspora Art, London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2021.
Chambers has worked with a great many artists over the course of several decades, including Eugene Palmer, Cybil Charlier, Frank Bowling, Denzil Forrester, Barbara Walker and Alberta Whittle. His peer review texts, and other forms of writing have been published widely and include “T’waunii Sinclair, and the Ongoing Cultural Life of the Machete”, Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art (Nka#51, published in November 2022: 112 - 127); ‘Accentuating Latin American Art’s African Dimensions’ text for Dialogues: Afterlives and Different Futures for Latin American Art, convened by George Flaherty & Adele Nelson, Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture (University of California Press) Volume 4, Issue 2 (April 2022) 95-106; “Zippin’ up my boots, going back to my routes”, part of Book discussion: Hazel V. Carby, Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands, that appeared in Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism (Duke University Press). Number 64, Number 4, 2021: 187-197; and “It’s Time to Share”, text for Panorama, Anne Monahan and Isabel L. Taube (eds.), “Self-Criticality,” Colloquium, Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 6, no. 2 (Fall 2020).
Introduced by Ann Butler, Director of Library and Archives, CCS Bard.
CCS Bard Speaker Series Each semester CCS Bard hosts a program of lectures by leading artists, curators, art historians, and critics, situating the school and museum’s concerns within the larger context of contemporary art production and discourse. Speakers are selected primarily by second-year graduate students and also by faculty and staff. All lectures are free and open, and are documented through audio recordings that reside in the CCS Bard Library & Archives and online here.
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