Bridget R. Cooks

Last updated

Bridget R. Cooks is an American scholar, writer, curator, and academic. She is a professor who holds a joint appointment in the Department of African American Studies and the Department of Art History at the University of California, Irvine.

Contents

Education

Cooks holds a PhD in Visual and Cultural Studies from the Department of Art History at University of Rochester. [1] Douglas Crimp advised her dissertation, for which she received a Henry Luce Dissertation Fellowship in American Art. [2] Prior to UCI, she taught in the Department of Art and Art History and the Program of Ethnic Studies at Santa Clara University. [1]

Career

Cooks' research interests center on African American art history, Black visual culture, museology, and film criticism, and employ a feminist, postcolonial, and critical race theory lens. [3] Cooks has published more than forty articles, appearing in publications such as Afterall , Afterimage , American Studies , Aperture , American Quarterly , Cultural Critique , and Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. [4] She is the author of the book Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum (University of Massachusetts, 2011), which was awarded the inaugural James A. Porter & David C. Driskell Book Award in African American Art History in 2013. [5] Other book projects include co-editing the volume Historical Perspective of African Americans and a monograph on the work of Richard Mayhew, as well as forthcoming books on mannequins in museums, popular art of the civil rights movement, and a study of Norman Rockwell's civil rights era paintings.

Cooks has a long history of working in museums. She was an intern at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., Oakland Museum of California, and the National African American Museum Project which later became the National Museum of African American History and Culture. [6] She has also worked as a museum educator for the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her curatorial work in museums includes curating exhibitions including "The Art of Richard Mayhew" at the Museum of the African Diaspora, [7] San Francisco, "Grafton Tyler Brown: Exploring California" at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, [8] and "Ernie Barnes: A Retrospective" at the California African American Museum. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">African-American art</span> Visual arts of the people of African descent in the United States of America

African-American art is a broad term describing visual art created by African Americans. The range of art they have created, and are continuing to create, over more than two centuries is as varied as the artists themselves. Some have drawn on cultural traditions in Africa, and other parts of the world, for inspiration. Others have found inspiration in traditional African-American plastic art forms, including basket weaving, pottery, quilting, woodcarving and painting, all of which are sometimes classified as "handicrafts" or "folk art".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Driskell</span> American painter, scholar, and curator (1931–2020)

David C. Driskell was an American artist, scholar and curator; recognized for his work in establishing African-American Art as a distinct field of study. In his lifetime, Driskell was cited as one of the world's leading authorities on the subject of African-American Art. Driskell held the title of Distinguished University Professor of Art, Emeritus, at the University of Maryland, College Park. The David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, is named in his honor.

Lowery Stokes Sims is an American art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art known for her expertise in the work of African, African American, Latinx, Native and Asian American artists such as Wifredo Lam, Fritz Scholder, Romare Bearden, Joyce J. Scott and others. She served on the curatorial staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Museum of Arts and Design. She has frequently served as a guest curator, lectured internationally and published extensively, and has received many public appointments. Sims was featured in the 2010 documentary film !Women Art Revolution.

Amelia Jones, originally from Durham, North Carolina, is an American art historian, art theorist, art critic, author, professor and curator. Her research specialisms include feminist art, body art, performance art, video art, identity politics, and New York Dada. Jones's earliest work established her as a feminist scholar and curator, including through a pioneering exhibition and publication concerning the art of Judy Chicago; later, she broadened her focus on other social activist topics including race, class and identity politics. Jones has contributed significantly to the study of art and performance as a teacher, researcher, and activist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James A. Porter</span> African-American art historian, artist and teacher (1905–1970)

James Amos Porter was an African-American art historian, artist and teacher. He is best known for establishing the field of African-American art history and was influential in the African American Art movement.

Alison Saar is a Los Angeles, California based sculptor, mixed-media, and installation artist. Her artwork focuses on the African diaspora and black female identity and is influenced by African, Caribbean, and Latin American folk art and spirituality. Saar is well known for "transforming found objects to reflect themes of cultural and social identity, history, and religion." Saar credits her parents, collagist and assemblage artist Betye Saar and painter and art conservator Richard Saar, for her early exposure to are and to these metaphysical and spiritual practices. Saar followed in her parents footsteps along with her sisters, Lezley Saar and Tracye Saar-Cavanaugh who are also artists. Saar has been a practicing artist for many years, exhibiting in galleries around the world as well as installing public art works in New York City. She has received achievement awards from institutions including the New York City Art Commission as well as the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keith Anthony Morrison</span>

Keith Anthony Morrison, Commander of Distinction (C.D.), born May 20, 1942), is a Jamaican-born painter, printmaker, educator, critic, curator and administrator.

Richard Mayhew is an Afro-Native American landscape painter, illustrator, and arts educator. His abstract, brightly colored landscapes are informed by his experiences as an African American/Native American and his interest in Jazz and the performing arts. He lives and works in Soquel and Santa Cruz, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adrienne L. Kaeppler</span> American anthropologist and curator (1935–2022)

Adrienne Lois Kaeppler was an American anthropologist, curator of oceanic ethnology at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. She served as the President of the International Council on Traditional Music between 2005 and 2013. Her research focused on the interrelationships between social structure and the arts, including dance, music, and the visual arts, especially in Tonga and Hawaii. She was considered to be an expert on Tongan dance, and the voyages of the 18th-century explorer James Cook.

Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A., 1945–1980 was a scholarly initiative funded by the J. Paul Getty Trust to historicize the contributions to contemporary art history of artists, curators, critics, and others based in Los Angeles. Planned for nearly a decade, PST, as it was called, granted nearly 60 organizations throughout Southern California a total of $10 million to produce exhibitions that explored the years between 1945 and 1980. Underscoring the significance of this project, art critic Roberta Smith wrote in The New York Times:

Before [PST], we knew a lot [about the history of contemporary art], and that lot tended to greatly favor New York. A few Los Angeles artists were highly visible and unanimously revered, namely Ed Ruscha and other denizens of the Ferus Gallery, that supercool locus of the Los Angeles art scene in the 1960s, plus Bruce Nauman and Chris Burden, but that was about it. After, we know a whole lot more, and the balance is much more even. One of the many messages delivered by this profusion of what will eventually be nearly 70 museum exhibitions is that New York did not act alone in the postwar era. And neither did those fabulous Ferus boys.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karin Higa</span> American art historian (1966–2013)

Karin Higa was a curator and specialist in Asian American art.

<i>Two Centuries of Black American Art</i> 1976 LACMA exhibition

Two Centuries of Black American Art was a 1976 traveling exhibition of African-American art organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). It "received greater visibility and validation from the mainstream art world than any other group exhibition of work by Black artists." According to the Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, the "landmark" exhibition "drew widespread public attention to the contributions to African American artists to American visual culture."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle</span> American artist

Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle is also known as Olomidara Yaya. She is an American artist, author, and Assistant Professor at the University of California at Berkeley Department of Art Practice. Her work focuses on questions of race, sexuality, and history through a variety of visual and textual mediums. She lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Notable works include the Kentifrica project, the Tituba series, The Evanesced, and the Uninvited series. She is a member of CTRL+SHFT Collective in Oakland, California.

Jessica Millward is an American historian who focuses on African American history, early America, African diaspora, slavery, and gender. Her work focuses on the female slave experience by emphasizing narratives of black women during slavery.

Marie Johnson-Calloway was an American artist. She was born in Pimlico, Baltimore, Maryland to Sidney Edwards and Marie Edwards. She worked in the fields of painting and mixed-media assemblage.

Krista Thompson is an art historian. She serves as Weinberg College Board of Visitors Professor and Professor in the Department of Art History at Northwestern University. Her work focuses on modern and contemporary art and visual culture of the Africa diaspora, particularly the medium of photography.

Stephanie Elaine Pogue (1944–2002) was an American professor, printmaker, artist, and curator. Her artistic interests included the portrayal of women and the human figure.

Adama Delphine Fawundu Adama Delphine Fawundu is an artist born in Brooklyn, NY the ancestral space of the Lenni-Lanape. She is a descendant of the Mende, Krim, Bamileke, and Bubi peoples. Her multi-sensory artistic language centers around themes of indigenization and ancestral memory. Fawundu co-published the critically acclaimed book MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora with photographer Laylah Amatullah Barrayn. – MFON is a book featuring the diverse works of women and non-binary photographers of African descent. Her works have been presented in numerous exhibitions worldwide. She is a Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University.

Andrea Barnwell Brownlee is an American art curator and author. She is the current CEO of the Cummer Museum. She is the former director of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art. Her work has historically focused on the promotion of female African-American artists. She has published four books on artists.

Julie Crooks is a Canadian curator, researcher and instructor. She has been the head of the department of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora at the Art Gallery of Ontario since its founding in 2020.

References

  1. 1 2 "Bridget R. Cooks Faculty Profile". University of California, Irvine. Archived from the original on May 26, 2007.
  2. "Doctoral Student Receives Dissertation Fellowship". University of Rochester. Archived from the original on June 22, 2004.
  3. "A+P At Home: in Conversation: Dr. Kellie Jones and Dr. Bridget Cooks". Art and Practice. Archived from the original on July 20, 2020.
  4. "visual & Critical Studies Forum | Bridget Cooks". California College of the Arts. Archived from the original on July 18, 2020.
  5. "Driskell Center Announces First Recipient Of James A. Porter And David C. Driskell Book Award". University of Maryland. Archived from the original on July 20, 2020.
  6. "Bridget Cooks on "Exhibiting Blackness" and Art Museums". Burnaway. Archived from the original on November 5, 2019.
  7. "The Art of Richard Mayhew". Museum of the African Diaspora. Archived from the original on April 4, 2015.
  8. Christopher, Knight (June 30, 2018). "Review: Grafton Tyler Brown's California scenes at Pasadena museum's final show". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 20, 2020.
  9. "Ernie Barnes: A Retrospective". California African American Museum. Archived from the original on February 23, 2019.