The “Reckoning” in American Art History & Art Museums

Art historians and curators Bridget Cooks and Nana Adusei-Poku discuss art, museums and demands for change in the age of Black Lives Matter with museum educator Stacey Shelnut-Hendrick. They consider the complexities of rethinking art history and museum practices through the lens of Blackness and explore how artists are imagining worlds of Black freedom.

Nana Adusei-Poku is an assistant professor in African Diasporic art history in the Department of History of Art at U.C. Berkeley. She is the editor of the forthcoming book Reshaping the Field: Art of the African Diasporas on Display and curated the seminal exhibition Black Melancholia at the CCS Bard Galleries, Bard College, New York.

Bridget Cooks is a professor at U.C. Irvine with a joint appointment in visual culture and African American studies. She is the author of the groundbreaking book Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum (2010). She curated the traveling exhibition The Black Index and Ernie Barnes: A Retrospective at the California African American Museum.

Stacey Shelnut-Hendrick, deputy director of public engagement and learning at the Chrysler Museum of Art, has held positions at the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Studio Museum, Harlem, N.Y.; and the James E. Lewis Museum, Baltimore. She is known for innovative community-based museum programs, such as ArtPower and Block by Block.

Organized by the Manetti Shrem Museum. Co-sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History.