Image top right: Study for mural in home of Dr. W.W. and Mrs. Grace Goens in Hockessin, Delaware, Aaron Douglas, 1963. Source: Delaware Museum of ArtImage bottom right: Ballerby & Co Globe and Yinka Shonibare Installation, 1 April 2013. Source: Wikipedia, Creative Commons

Join California College of the Arts professor Jacqueline Francis, for this four-session seminar examining the art and artists of the Black Atlantic (a geographic formation including Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe) with an emphasis on aesthetic objects produced by African and/or African-descended peoples. Each session will build upon content presented in the previous session, so we ask attendees to register for and attend all four sessions.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

This course is designed to do the following:

• To provide participants an introduction and overview of key African Diaspora artists and art history
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• To help participants understand the contribution of prominent artists and movements of the African Diaspora and how these movements worked alongside other art historical movements.
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• To promote creative and self-directed learning through the research, reading, and presenting processes

You will receive instructions to join via zoom after you register. Look for an email from MoAD after you sign up, if you don’t receive it in your inbox, look in your spam or junk mail.

‍Meeting 1: Artists’ Study of the African Diaspora — 20th Century Interventions

January 20, 2021 – 6:00 PM (PST)

‍Meeting 2: Defining Diaspora

January 27, 2021 – 6:00 pm (PST)

‍Meeting 3: Jumping Up and Showing Out: Carnival and Other Critiques

February 3, 2021 – 6:00 pm (PST)

‍Meeting 4: Conclusion and Concluding Topics (TBD)

February 10, 2021 – 6:00 pm (PST)

Jacqueline Francis, PhD is the author of Making Race: Modernism and “Racial Art” in America (2012) and co-editor of Romare Bearden: American Modernist (2011). With Mary Ann Calo, Francis is working on a new book about African-American artists’ participation in federally funded art programs of the 1930s and their impact on the emergent, US art market of the 1940s. Recently, she has published articles on contemporary artists Olivia Mole, Joan Jonas, Andrea Fraser, and (with Tina Takemoto) David Hammons, and on the hot topic of Fair Use.

Forthcoming are essays on Romare Bearden (The Museum of Modern Art), Mickalane Thomas (Seattle Art Museum), and Kerry James Marshall (Kunst und Politik, Jahrbuck der Guernica-Gesellschaft). With Kathy Zarur, Francis co-curated the art exhibition Where Is Here for the Museum of the African Diaspora (October 2016-May 2017).

This seminar series is made possible by the generous support of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.