Commitment to Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, Inclusion, and Positive Change
The Kress Foundation Department of Art History is committed to creating and sustaining a diverse, equitable, accessible and inclusive community of students, teachers, and scholars. Through courses and research exploring cultural traditions from across the globe and spanning history, we aim to illuminate the rich diversity of human expression and experience and to foster appreciation for our common humanity. As we strive to move beyond a past built on racism, prejudice and systemic oppression, we pledge to do more to understand the historical forces that have created and perpetuate inequality, to advance anti-racism in our classrooms and within our community, and to build a truly inclusive art history. We are committed to ensuring that all students feel welcome in our classes regardless of their backgrounds, experiences, abilities and identities.
Graduate Student Led DEAI Committee
Mission Statement
KU Art History graduate students working toward a people-centered academic environment that respects diversity of experience and challenges disciplinary norms through empathy and mutual understanding.
Vision Statement
The KU Art History DEAI Committee pledges to foster an environment of belonging and equity in the visual art and art history communities.
Structure
We are a student-led volunteer organization, and our meetings are open to all KU Art History graduate students.
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Lecture Series: Intersections of Identity: Expression, Exchange, and Hybridity
This series began in the 2020-21 academic year with the intention of demonstrating how art history's critical investigation of the past - and contemporary artists' grappling with challenges of the present - can help us to recognize, analyze, and combat racism and inequality, affirming our discipline's value in the ongoing struggle to create a more just and equitable society.
What constitutes identity, and how do people navigate, form, and reform their sense of self? And how can the study of art and its history help us to consider the diverse identities expressed by visual culture and its creators? This series seeks to amplify the voices of scholars and artists whose work explores individual and collective identities as those intersect with notions of the body, dis/ability, gender, heritage, and race.
The series is sponsored by the Franklin Murphy Lecture Fund of the Kress Foundation Department of Art History. The lectures in the initial season were presented in partnership with the Spencer Museum of Art, KU Department of Visual Art, Lawrence Arts Center, Lawrence Public Library, Raven Bookstore, BLACK Lawrence, and other community partners.
2023-2024 Speakers
Curating Disability Justice
Dr. Jessica Cooley: ACLS Postdoctoral Associate at the Liberal Arts Engagement Hub, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
On How Portuguese Footholds Along the Coastal Line of Morocco Became Sites of Imperial
Dr. Avinoam Shalem: Riggio Professor of the History of the Arts of Islam Columbia University
THE COLOR OF NIGHT IN BYZANTINE ART
Dr. Benjamin Anderson Associate Professor of the History of Art and Classics, Cornell University
2022-2023 Speakers
Coloring Outside the Lines
DR. KELLI MORGAN: Professor of the Practice and Director of Curatorial Studies, Tufts University
The Women Artists of the Banana Garden Poetry Club: Test-Image Exchanges, Friendship, Family, and Identity in 17th Century China
DR. LARA BLANCHARD: Luce Professor of East Asian Art, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
2021-2022 Speakers
Rejecting the Feminist Label: Xiang Jing and the Construction of an Artist’s Identity
QUINCY NGAN: Assistant Professor, Pre-Modern to Contemporary Chinese Art, Yale University
Land and Sovereignty: The Foundation for Public Art and Studio Practice
HOCK E AYE VI EDGAR HEAP OF BIRDS: multi-disciplinary artist
Golem Girl: Being and Painting the Other
RIVA LEHRER: Chicago based artist, writer, and curator
Thinking Through Color: F. N. Souza's Black Paintings
ATREYEE GUPTA: Assistant Professor, Modern and Contemporary Art University of California Berkeley
Blue Like Me: The Art of Siona Benjamin
SIONA BENJAMIN: NYC based artist, speaker, and educator
Interdependent: Strategies of Friendship and Care in Asian American Art
LAURA KINA: Vincent de Paul Professor of Art, Media, & Design; Director of Critical Ethnic Studies DePaul University
2020-2021 Speakers
Unfinished (We Are What's Left Undone): Identity, Performative Racial Scripts & the Necessity of the Anti-Colonial Iconoclast
M. CARMEN LANE: Cleveland-based artist, writer, and director of the ATNSC: Center for Healing & Creative Leadership
Archive/Agency/Argument: Mobilizing the Knowledge of Colonial India's 'Native' Artists in 'Global' Art Histories
DIPTI KHERA: Associate Professor of Art History, NYU
The Fashion and Race Database: Providing a Pedagogical Platform Amidst Fashion’s Racial Reckoning
KIMBERLY M. JENKINS: Assistant Professor of Fashion Studies, Ryerson University, Toronto
Dalí's "Dream of Venus:" Sex, Surrealism, and Eugenics at the 1939 New York World's Fair
KERI WATSON: Associate Professor of Art History, University of Central Florida, and Director of the Florida Prison Education Project
