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Reframing Blackness

What’s Black about “History of Art”?

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Reframing Blackness

Written by: Alayo Akinkugbe
Narrated by: Alayo Akinkugbe
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Since the inception of mainstream art history, Blackness has been distinctly ignored.

In Reframing Blackness, art historian and founder of @ABlackHistoryOfArt, Alayo Akinkugbe challenges this void.

Exploring the presentation of Black figures in Western art, Blackness in museums, Blackness in feminist art movements, as well as Blackness in the curriculum, Alayo unveils an overlooked but integral part of our collective art history.

Refreshing and accessible, this promises to start a much-needed conversation in culture and education.

© Alayo Akinkugbe 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

 Americas Art Black & African American History & Criticism United States

Critic Reviews

A sparkling debut. Bold, eloquent, personal and clear-eyed, Alayo Akinkugbe is a major new voice in writing about art, museums and culture. Reframing Blackness shows us how addressing absences and erasures can be about so much more than just filling the gaps. This book is a manifesto, a manual and a toolkit all at once, focused on the urgent tasks of reimagining the canon, transforming the curriculum, and bringing art history into the 21st century. It will shift your frames of reference, expand your canvas, and give you hope for the future — changing how you look at art while also making you look again at your ways of seeing (Dan Hicks, author of THE BRUTISH MUSEUMS)

Reframing Blackness is a testament to the necessity and vital importance of taking an active role in not only curating knowledge but challenging systems of knowing that have shaped our world view thus far.

Alayo Akinkugbe illustrates exactly how structural education should never wholly substitute the learning that we must continue to do into adulthood. To explore a history of Black communities across centuries of art is a love letter to the practice, a gift of knowledge and an ode to those who’s creative expressions give us much to be inspired by today.

To curate knowledge, is to understand and know ourselves better in a world we inherited, and a world that we contribute to in our short time here

(Sofia Akel, cultural historian and founder of Free Books Campaign)
By engaging in dialogue with the curators of recent pivotal exhibitions, Akinkugbe demonstrates a shared commitment to uncovering what has been overlooked – and a commitment to deepening the discourse around blackness ... The book raises key questions that black cultural producers have grappled with in the UK since the 1960s ... Akinkugbe guides us closer to a vision that does not require black people to reinsert ourselves, but insists on our resolute presence – both then and now.
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