Lifton Lecture

Speaker: Joan Kee, Judy and Michael Steinhardt Director of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University

Capitals of Afrasia

How do we embark on a history of art from the assumption of a global majority?  Comprising the regions that more than 80% of the world call home, Afro Asia came to the political fore in the mid-1950s, calling for accelerated decolonisation on the one hand and rejecting Cold War polarisation on the other. Building on this history, this talk mobilises Afro Asia as an epistemological grounds for rethinking geographical, social and aesthetic worlds primarily through the worlds Black and Asian artists have catalysed through their work. What are some of its capitals? What capital is needed to enable its possibilities? 

Joan Kee is Judy and Michael Steinhardt Director of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. A specialist in modern and contemporary art, her books include Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method (2013), Models of Integrity: Art and Law in Post-Sixties America (2019), and The Geometries of Afro Asia: Art beyond Solidarity (2023). A contributing editor to Artforum and an editor-at-large for the Brooklyn Rail, Kee’s work has appeared in numerous venues including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, LACMA, and the Guggenheim Museum.

Joan's website: ifa.nyu.edu…