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.
Accessibility for Public Programs
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All our programs are recorded through audio recordings that reside in the CCS Bard Library & Archives and online here. To inquire about a recording, please contact CCSVisits@bard.edu.
American Sign Language Interpretation
ASL-English interpretation is available for public programs upon request with two weeks advance notice. To place a request, please contact CCSVisits@bard.edu. Relay and voice calls welcome.
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Verbal description is available for public programs upon request with two weeks advance notice. To place a request, please contact CCSVisits@bard.edu. Relay and voice calls welcome.
Captioning
When public programs are held over Zoom, live transcription is available . transcription is available .