A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.
Portrait of Eddie Chambers, an adult Black man with short gray hair seated againt an orange background.

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Eddie Chambers

Professor, Goldabelle McComb Finn Distinguished Professor in Art History

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Bio

Professor Eddie Chambers (he/him) joined the faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the fall 2025 semester as Goldabelle McComb Finn Distinguished Professor in Art History, Theory, and Criticism. He was previously on the faculty of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin in 2010, teaching African Diaspora art history, where he was the holder of the David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professorship in Art History. He received his doctorate in 1998 from Goldsmiths College, University of London, awarded for his thesis ‘Black Visual Arts Activity in England Between 1981–1986: Press and Public Responses’.

He was first an artist, having graduated from art school (Sunderland Polytechnic) in 1983 with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art. His work is included in several collections including Tate Britain, Sheffield Museums, and the Arts Council Collection, London. He spent a considerable number of years as an independent curator, working with many artists including Denzil Forrester, Eugene Palmer, Tam Joseph, Frank Bowling, Permindar Kaur, and Lesley Sanderson. In addition to his exhibition work, he has written extensively about the work of modern and contemporary artists in the United Kingdom and other parts of the world. His articles, essays and peer review texts have been published in a range of magazines and journals, and he has been, for over three decades a contributor to Art Monthly (London). In June 2018 he was appointed an Art Monthly Foundation Honorary Patron, (other patrons being Liam Gillick, Hans Haacke, Mona Hatoum, Alfredo Jaar, and Martha Rosler).

Eddie Chambers has guest-edited a number of magazines and journals, including Critical Interventions, the International Review of African American Art, and several issues of Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art. The most recent issue of Nka he guest-edited was #50, published in May 2022, dedicated to subjects related to African American Artists in the International Arena.

A collection of his articles and essays, titled "Run Through the Jungle" was published by the Institute of International Visual Arts (London) as part of its ‘Annotations’ series in 1999. His book Things Done Change: The Cultural Politics of Recent Black Artists in Britain was published by Rodopi Editions, Amsterdam and New York, 2012, as part of its Cross/Cultures —Readings in the Post/Colonial Literatures in English series. He was the author of Black Artists in British Art: A History Since the 1950s, published in 2014 by I. B. Tauris/Bloomsbury, London and New York. In 2016, I. B. Tauris/Bloomsbury published his book Roots & Culture: Cultural Politics in the Making of Black Britain, a study of Black Britons’ cultural identity formations. His latest book is World is Africa: Writings on Diaspora Art, published by Bloomsbury, 2021.

He was the editor of the Routledge Companion to African American Art History, published in 2019, and the editor of the Routledge Companion to African Diaspora Art History, published in 2024.

He served a three-year term as editor-in-chief of CAA's Art Journal from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2024.

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This class will begin with considerations of African Diaspora identity formations and how such formations and histories relate to the broad subject of the class - African Diaspora art history. We will consider the work of a number of leading artists of the African Diaspora, located throughout the world in geographic regions such as the Americas, Europe and artists emerging out of the continent of Africa itself. With African Diaspora art history being such a relatively recent addition to the canon of art history, pretty much all of the artists we look at in this class will be reflective of the modern and contemporary art history periods.
The class will use a variety of texts, most frequently catalogue essays relating to artists of the African Diaspora, many of whom are now established figures in exhibitions and biennales. Artists such as Keith Piper, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, Sonia Boyce, Isaac Julien and others whose work can be seen as emerging from a confluence of factors including migration, diaspora, history and identity.  Our readings will also include texts by art historians and curators who have worked with, or written about, such artists. The texts will demonstrate the extent to which African Diaspora identity formations are often central to nuanced readings of these artists' practices.
Students are required to submit one short 'reaction' paper each week, plus a 4-6 page research paper at the end of the semester. The main emphasis of the seminar will be on active class participation and discussion of the artists and their work.

Class Number

2118

Credits

3

Description

How have or how do artists engage with the complexities of visualizing racial difference, racial experience and racial identities? These are the questions to be considered in this class. As much as `race¿ can be understood as a fiction, it also manifests its presence in the visual arts. From the hundreds of European portrait painters who have painted their white patrons in the subservient company of enslaved Black people, through to the many modern and contemporary artists whose work touches on or is grounded in ideas of racial experience and representation. The class asks, what happens when race, art, and identity collide or overlap?
The class will use a variety of texts, most frequently catalogue essays relating to artists such as Barbara Walker, Chris Ofili, Yinka Shonibare, Renee Cox, and Mickalene Thomas, and others whose work can be seen as representing a confluence of art, identity and race-related considerations.  Our readings will also include texts by art historians and curators who have worked with, or written about, such artists. The texts will demonstrate the extent to which art, identity and race-related considerations are seemingly easily applied to certain artists, but presumed to be absent from certain other artists.
Students are required to submit one short `reaction¿ paper each week, plus a longer 10-12 page research paper at the end of the semester. The main emphasis of the seminar will be on active class participation and discussion of the artists and their work.

Class Number

2263

Credits

3

Description

Using the Spring 2025 Visiting Artist Program (VAP) lectures as a point of departure, this seminar addresses some of the most urgent issues and debates shaping the production and distribution of art right now. The class will attend all of the VAP lectures on Tuesday nights throughout the term, followed by exclusive discussions with the artists in question on Wednesday mornings. Seminar readings will include texts and interviews on each visiting artist, as well as broader texts that expand their concerns to larger concerns in cultural, social and political spheres. We will repeatedly ask our visitors and ourselves: what is it that art has to offer that is unique from activism, journalism, media studies, sociology, or any other field of inquiry or action?

Founded in 1868, the Visiting Artists Program is one of the oldest public programs of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It has featured over 1,000 international artists, designers, and scholars representing more than 70 countries through a diverse mix of lectures, screenings, conversations, and readings. Attending the lectures on Tuesdays and the seminar on Wednesday morning is mandatory, which means that students' schedules will need to be free both times. Class will meet both Tuesday and Wednesday on weeks when there is a VAP lecture, and only on Wednesdays when there is no lecture. Assignments will include a journal with short responses to all the lectures and a final paper or creative project related to course material.

Class Number

1957

Credits

3

Description

Using the Spring 2025 Visiting Artist Program (VAP) lectures as a point of departure, this seminar addresses some of the most urgent issues and debates shaping the production and distribution of art right now. The class will attend all of the VAP lectures on Tuesday nights throughout the term, followed by exclusive discussions with the artists in question on Wednesday mornings. Seminar readings will include texts and interviews on each visiting artist, as well as broader texts that expand their concerns to larger concerns in cultural, social and political spheres. We will repeatedly ask our visitors and ourselves: what is it that art has to offer that is unique from activism, journalism, media studies, sociology, or any other field of inquiry or action?

Founded in 1868, the Visiting Artists Program is one of the oldest public programs of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It has featured over 1,000 international artists, designers, and scholars representing more than 70 countries through a diverse mix of lectures, screenings, conversations, and readings. Attending the lectures on Tuesdays and the seminar on Wednesday morning is mandatory, which means that students' schedules will need to be free both times. Class will meet both Tuesday and Wednesday on weeks when there is a VAP lecture, and only on Wednesdays when there is no lecture. Assignments will include a journal with short responses to all the lectures and a final paper or creative project related to course material.

Class Number

1965

Credits

3

Description

Since slavery, the Black (African/African origin) female has found herself caricatured, stereotyped and depicted in a variety of often-problematic forms. The class will begin with considerations of the late 18th/early 19th century persona of Sarah/Sara Baartman, the most well-known of at least two women from southern Africa who, on account of their supposedly enlarged buttocks, were exhibited as freak show attractions in 19th-century Europe under the name Hottentot Venus, ¿Hottentot¿ being at the time a dominant (though offensive) generic name for indigenous people of southern Africa). The framing of Baartman as deformed, yet over-sexualized, primitive, yet appealing to European voyeurs seemed to set a number of the terms of reference within which Black women would be located thereafter. This class will discuss the ways in which Black women have been visualized by the dominant culture, with regards to movements such as Orientalism, and with reference to images of Black women in the media, film and television.
The class will look closely at the work of Black women artists themselves and the ways in which these artists have pushed back against dominant framings of Black women, within their work. Self-portraiture will figure significantly. The class will look at artists as varied as Elizabeth Catlett, Faith Ringgold, Renée Cox, and Mickalene Thomas. It will use texts such as Muse: Mickalene Thomas; Kimberly Wallace-Sanders (ed) Skin Deep, Spirit Strong: The Black Female Body in American Culture; Janell Hobson Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture; Deborah Willis and Carla Williams, The Black Female Body: A Photographic History.
Reading Assignments, Research presentations, one research essay (approx. 15 pages).

Class Number

2130

Credits

3

Description

This independent study program for Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism candidates is taken in the final term of coursework.

Class Number

2541

Credits

3