IMAGE: Kudzani Chiurai, Revelations IX, 2011, Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery

‍Join us for a conversation with Andrew Hennlich, curator of After the Thrill is Gone: Fashion, Politics and Culture in Contemporary South African Art, and David Anthony III, Associate Professor of History at UC Santa Cruz. The discussion between Anthony and Hennlich will consider the historical and social condition of post-apartheid South Africa, the visual iconography explored in After the Thrill is Gone, and the exhibition’s relevance and relationship to wider historical and political issues within the African diaspora.

‍This program will include a wine reception

Andrew Hennlich is Assistant Professor of Art History at the Gwen Frostic School of Art at Western Michigan University and a Research Associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre at the University of Johannesburg. He has published widely on memory, politics, immigration, identity, and temporality in contemporary South African art, writing on artists including Athi-Patra Ruga, Dan Halter, William Kentridge, Avant Car Guard, Julia Rosa Clark, Haroon Gunn-Salie and Pierre Fouché for various edited anthologies, exhibition catalogs, and journals including esse, Safundi, and Image & Text (Pretoria, South Africa).

Hennlich’s current research projects include two in-progress book manuscripts: (un)Fixing the Eye William Kentridge and the Optics of Witness and Space Invaders: the Work of Art in an Age of Statelessness. He is also developing an exhibition entitled Giving Offense: Arresting Rudeness and National Identity After 1989.

David H. Anthony, III is Professor of African History at UC Santa Cruz. He focuses on intersections between culture and society in Africa's Atlantic and Indian Ocean World Diasporas. His research interests include African and African-American history, art, music, literature and cinema; eastern and southern Africa; African Languages; Indian Ocean wold; African and African American linkages; Islamic civilization; African diaspora studies; and world history.

Journals of publication include African Studies Review, Social Sciences and Mission, Journal of Religion In Africa, Journal of Anglican Studies, among others. Anthony authored Max Yergan: Race Man, Internationalist, Cold Warrior (New York: New York University Press, 2006).

He is currently a co-editor with Robert Edgar and Robert Vinson of the documentary volume in progress, Crossing The Water: African American Linkages with South Africa building upon decades of independent and collaborative work and three field archival and interview periods beginning in 2000, 2001 and 2002.