Gus Casely-Hayford | |
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Born | Augustus Lavinus Casely-Hayford 1964 (age 58–59) Wandsworth, London, UK |
Alma mater | School of Oriental and African Studies |
Occupation(s) | Curator, historian, broadcaster, lecturer |
Relatives |
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Augustus Lavinus Casely-Hayford OBE (born 1964) is a British curator, cultural historian, broadcaster and lecturer with ancestral Ghanaian roots in the Casely-Hayford family. [1]
He is presently the Director of V&A East and was formerly the Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in June 2018 for his services to Arts and Culture. [2] and Professor of Practice at SOAS in 2021. He was commissioned to present a second TV series of Tate Walks for Sky Arts in 2017 featuring David Bailey, Helena Bonham Carter, Billy Connolly, Robert Lindsay, Jeremy Paxman and Harriet Walter. [3] Casely-Hayford was awarded the Leader of the Year for Arts and Media by the Black British Business Awards 2017. He delivered a TED talk in August 2017. [4] He has been awarded a Cultural Fellowship at King's College, London, and a Fellowship at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). [5] [6]
In 2010, as part of the Wonderful Africa Season, [7] he presented Lost Kingdoms of Africa , four 60-minute television programmes for BBC Two and BBC Four; [8] in 2014, the series was broadcast by the French-speaking TV channel Histoire. He was commissioned to present a second series in February 2012. He wrote the book Lost Kingdoms of Africa in 2012, published by Bantam Press. He presented a study of William Hogarth and the 18th century for the television series The Genius of British Art, on Channel 4, in 2010 and hosted The Culture Show for BBC 2 in 2012. [9] In 2016 Casely-Hayford presented the television series Tate Walks for Sky Arts. He is also the author of a book on Timbuktu, published in 2018 by Ladybird/Penguin. Since 2022, he has hosted a reboot of the long-running archeological television show Time Team , viewable on the Time Team Official Channel on YouTube.
Born in London, England, into the prominent Ghanaian Casely-Hayford family, Gus Casely-Hayford attended Clayesmore School in Dorset from 1978 to 1980, [10] [11] and went on to gain a PhD in African History from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London University. [12] [13] His doctoral thesis was titled "A genealogical history of Cape Coast stool families". [14]
He is the former executive director of Arts Strategy for Arts Council England. [15] [16] He was previously Director of inIVA (Institute of International Visual Art), [17] a London-based arts organisation with a particular emphasis on international practice, which collaborates with partner venues throughout the UK and worldwide. Prior to this he was the Director of Africa 05, [18] the largest African arts season ever hosted in Britain, [19] involving throughout 2005 more than 150 cultural organisations, including the BBC, [20] the aim of which Casely-Hayford said was to create "sustainable change in the way the art world – and the public – thinks about Africa. ...We don't want this just to be about one year." [21]
He also led the British Museum's diversity programme. [20] He has advised the United Nations and the Canada Council, Council for Culture of the Dutch and Norwegian Arts Councils, and was commissioned to develop the future audience vision for the Tate family of galleries. In 2012 he was a Jury member of the National Open Art Competition and the National Portrait Gallery's BP Portrait Award. In 2013 he was the Chair of the Caine Prize judges. He was chair of the advisory panel for the 2015 British Library exhibition West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song and co-authored the accompanying book of the same title. [22] [23]
He has presented an award-winning South Bank show on African art, produced a documentary on Chris Ofili for Channel 4 and presented several series on African culture for BBC World Service. He has presented Brit Art – Where to Now? for BBC Four. [24] He was a commissioner of arts for the Greater London Authority.
He lectures on world art at Sotheby's, Goldsmiths College and the University of Westminster, and is a consultant for organisations such as the United Nations, the Arts Council and the BBC. He is a Clore Fellow and is a Trustee of the National Trust, a member of English Heritage's Blue Plaque Group and a member of Tate's "Tate for All Board". He is a Judge for the Art Fund's "Museum of the Year" in 2016. He was formerly a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery and a Council Member of Tate Britain. He also sits on the Caine Prize Council [25] and is a spokesperson for the National Archives' Explore Your Archive programme. Casely-Hayford is a supporter of Sense International. [26] [27]
In 2019, he was named as the inaugural director of the forthcoming V&A East in London. [28] [29]
In February 2022, Casely-Hayford was announced as the new presenter of the online revival of Time Team , alongside Natalie Haynes. [30]
He is the brother of fashion designer Joe Casely-Hayford, OBE (1956–2019), and of lawyer Margaret Casely-Hayford, and (as son of Victor Casely-Hayford, an accountant who trained as a barrister) [31] [32] the grandson of J. E. Casely Hayford (1866–1930), the great Gold Coast thinker, writer and politician. [33] He is married and has one daughter, and as of 2018 the family lived in Washington, DC. [34]
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: others (link)Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
The London Borough of Southwark in South London forms part of Inner London and is connected by bridges across the River Thames to the City of London and London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It was created in 1965 when three smaller council areas amalgamated under the London Government Act 1963. All districts of the area are within the London postal district. It is governed by Southwark London Borough Council.
SOAS University of London is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury area of central London.
Alexander Robert "Sandy" Nairne is a British art historian and curator. From 2002 until February 2015 he was the director of the National Portrait Gallery, London.
The Caine Prize for African Writing is an annual literary award for the best original short story by an African writer, whether in Africa or elsewhere, published in the English language. Founded in the United Kingdom in 2000, the £10,000 prize was named in memory of businessman and philanthropist Sir Michael Harris Caine, former Chairman of Booker Group plc and of the Booker Prize management committee. Because of this connection with the Booker Prize, the Caine Prize is sometimes called the "African Booker". The prize is known as the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing. The Chair of the Board is Ellah Wakatama, appointed in 2019.
Ekow Eshun is a British writer, journalist, broadcaster, and curator.
Joseph Ephraim Casely-Hayford was a British fashion designer. Beginning in the mid-1980s he established an international reputation as one of the UK's most respected and consistently relevant designers of men's and womenswear clothing. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, for services to the fashion industry, in the 2007 Birthday Honours.
John Owen Hunwick was a noted British professor, author, and Africanist. He has published several books, articles and journals in the African Studies field. He was formerly Professor Emeritus at Northwestern University, having retired in 2004 after 23 years of service.
Iniva is the Institute of International Visual Art, a visual arts organisation based in London that collaborates with contemporary artists, curators and writers. Iniva runs the Stuart Hall Library, and is based in Pimlico, on the campus of Chelsea College of Arts.
Beattie Casely-Hayford was a Ghanaian engineer. He was the first director of the Ghana Arts Council, a co-founder of the Ghana National Dance Ensemble, and a director of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC).
Asafo are traditional warrior groups in Akan culture, based on lineal descent. The word derives from sa, meaning war, and fo, meaning people. The traditional role of the Asafo companies was defence of the state. As the result of contact with European colonial powers on the Gold Coast, the Fante, who inhabit the coastal region, developed an especially complex version of the concept in terms of its social and political organization based on martial principles, and with elaborate traditions of visual art, including flag banners with figurative scenes, and designs alluding to historical events or proverbs.
Archibald "Archie" Casely-Hayford was a British-trained Ghanaian barrister and politician, who was involved in nationalist politics in the former Gold Coast. Having joined the Convention People's Party (CPP), in 1951 he was elected Municipal Member for Kumasi and was appointed by Kwame Nkrumah Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources in the government of the First Republic. When Nkrumah declared Ghana's Independence on 6 March 1957, he was photographed on the podium flanked by Casely-Hayford, together with Kojo Botsio, Komla Agbeli Gbedemah, Nathaniel Azarco Welbeck and Krobo Edusei.
Margaret Yvonne Busby,, Hon. FRSL, also known as Nana Akua Ackon, is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster, resident in the UK. She was Britain's youngest and first black female book publisher when she and Clive Allison (1944–2011) co-founded the London-based publishing house Allison and Busby in the 1960s. She edited the anthology Daughters of Africa (1992), and its 2019 follow-up New Daughters of Africa. She is a recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature. In 2020 she was voted one of the "100 Great Black Britons". In 2021, she was honoured with the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2023, Busby was named as president of English PEN.
West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song was a major four-month exhibition at the British Library in London — the first of its kind in the UK to explore in detail the cultural history of the region, through literature, artefacts, art, music and performance — which ran from 16 October 2015 to 16 February 2016. It has been described as "undoubtedly the most ambitious exhibition to date at the British Library".
Casely-Hayford is an English language patronymic surname that is native to Ghana. It is most commonly borne by the Casely-Hayford family, descendants of the famous 19th century Euro-Fante and Pan-Africanist, J. E. Casely-Hayford of Cape Coast. The family is one of Ghana's most prominent families, and in recent times, its members have also risen to positions of influence in the Black British elite. In 2008, the Casely-Hayfords were named on "The Black Powerlist" as the most influential black family in the UK.
C. Andrew Gerstle, FBA is an American-born Japanologist and academic, who has been Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies since 1993.
The Clore Duffield Foundation is a registered charity in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 2000 by the merger of two charitable foundations, the Clore Foundation of Charles Clore and his daughter's Vivien Duffield Foundation.
Joseph de Graft Hayford (1840–1919) was a Wesleyan Methodist minister who was a prominent figure in Fante politics and society in the Gold Coast. He was one of the founders of the Fante Confederation of 1867 and one of the first political detainees in Ghanaian history.
Africa '95 or Africa 95, styled as africa95, was a Britain-wide celebration of African music, art, dance and poetry that was held over several months during the last quarter of 1995, with more than 60 arts institutions throughout the UK participating in related events. It was chaired by English businessman Sir Michael Caine, with Clémentine Deliss as artistic director, under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth II, President Nelson Mandela of South Africa, and President Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal.