Athena Asks: The Language of Beauty in African Art at Kimbell Art Museum

Alayo Akinkugbe, the Nigerian art historian and figure behind @blackhistoryofart, interviews Dr Constantine Petridis, Curator of African Art and Chair of the Department of Arts of Africa and the America at the Art Institute of Chicago. They focus on his new exhibition The Language of Beauty in African Art, which challenges Western framing of this art through the lens of modernist Primitivism, presenting it instead through ideas about beauty indigenous to the African communities which have produced it. They also discuss the exhibition in terms of current debates about restitution. You can also listen to the episode on YouTube here.

Here is a 2 minute extract from the podcast:

July 2022