Richard J. Powell

Born, 1953 in Chicago, USA.

A hugely important figure in the fields of research, scholarship, publishing and curating of African American and African Diaspora visual arts, Richard J. Powell is a Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. He studied Fine Arts at Morehouse College, Atlanta and Howard University, Washington DC, before undertaking a doctoral programme at Yale University, New Haven. Powell is responsible for a number of publications relating to African American art and art of the African Diaspora, including Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson, 1991; Jacob Lawrence 1992 and Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century (1997, reissued in 2002 as Black Art: A Cultural History). Powell has also organised, curated and co-curated a significant number of key exhibitions relating to African American art and art of the African Diaspora. These include The Blues Aesthetic: Black Culture and Modernism, 1989; Rhapsodies in Black; Art of the Harlem Renaissance, 1997; To Conserve a Legacy: American Art at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, 1999; Beauford Delaney: The Color Yellow, 2002 and Back to Black, 2005.

For the Rhapsodies in Black catalogue he contributed a major essay which sought to contextualise and introduce the exhibition. it was titled Re/Birth of a Nation, pp. 14 - 33.

He delivered a paper as part of the Curatorial Debates since the 1980s panel at the Shades of Black conference, 20 April 2001, Duke University.

»  Art Monthly 288 | Back to Black: art, cinema and the racial imaginary

Review relating to an exhibition, 2005

»  Back to Black - catalogue

Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 2005

»  Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century

Book relating to a publication, 1997

»  Shades of Black (book)

Book relating to a publication, 2005

»  Shades of Black book review (Art Monthly)

Review relating to a publication, 2005