SALE ON NOW! PROMOTIONS

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

Reframing Blackness

What’s Black about “History of Art”?

Alayo Akinkugbe

$45

Hardback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English
Merky Books
21 October 2025
An original and wide-ranging riposte to the current understanding of Blackness in Western art and museums, from an upcoming curator and founder of @ABlackHistoryOfArt

\""Akinkugbe is a brilliant new writer and thinker challenging art history. This book is urgent, essential, accessible and it needs to be on every art history reading list.\"" -- Bernardine Evaristo

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, as well as Blackness in museums, in feminist art movements and 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.
By:  
Imprint:   Merky Books
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 224mm,  Width: 143mm,  Spine: 18mm
Weight:   479g
ISBN:   9781529186406
ISBN 10:   1529186404
Pages:   176
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming

Alayo Akinkugbe graduated from the University of Cambridge with a BA in History of Art in 2021 and graduated with an MA in Curating the Art Museum from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2023. She runs the Instagram platform @ABlackHistoryofArt, which highlights Black artists, sitters, curators and thinkers from art history and the present day; and hosts the podcast A Shared Gaze. Alayo is a contributing editor and writes the column 'Black Gazes' for AnOther Magazine. She was awarded a curatorial research grant by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art for the exhibition Entangled Pasts- Art Colonialism and Change at the Royal Academy of Arts. Alayo was on the advisory panel and contributed to the book African Artists- From 1882 to Now, published by Phaidon in 2021, and has written for publications including Dazed, Tate Etc. and The World of Interiors. Reframing Blackness is her first book.

Reviews for Reframing Blackness: What’s Black about “History of Art”?

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


See Also