Gus Casely-Hayford | |
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Born | Augustus Lavinus Casely-Hayford 1964 (age 59–60) 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 Tony Knox's award-winning South Bank Show about the "Flags of the Fante Coast", 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, [28] [29] due to open in east London in 2025, [30] with Yinka Shonibare as an ambassador for the new museum. [31]
In February 2022, Casely-Hayford was announced as the new presenter of the online revival of Time Team , alongside Natalie Haynes. [32]
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) [33] [34] the grandson of J. E. Casely Hayford (1866–1930), the great Gold Coast thinker, writer and politician. [35] He is married and has one daughter, and lives in London with his family. [36]
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Sir David Frank Adjaye is a Ghanaian-British architect who has designed many notable buildings around the world, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.. Adjaye was knighted in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to architecture. He received the 2021 Royal Gold Medal, making him the first African recipient and one of the youngest recipients. He was appointed to the Order of Merit in 2022.
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John Ebenezer Samuel de Graft-Hayford (1912–2002) was the first Ghanaian to serve as Chief of Air Staff in Ghana. He was also the first indigenous Air Force Commander in Black Sub-Saharan Africa and briefly served as acting Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) in 1962.
Dame Magdalene Anyango Namakhiya Odundo is a Kenyan-born British studio potter, who now lives in Farnham, Surrey. Her work is in the collections of notable museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, The British Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Museum of African Art.
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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 British academic, author, and Africanist. He published several books, articles and journals in the African Studies field. He was professor emeritus at Northwestern University, having retired in 2004 after 23 years of service. Hunwick died in Skokie, Illinois on 1 April 2015, at the age of 79.
Philip Jonathan Clifford Mould is an English art dealer, London gallery owner, art historian, writer and broadcaster. He has made a number of major art discoveries, including works of Thomas Gainsborough, Anthony Van Dyck and Thomas Lawrence.
Charlie Casely-Hayford is a menswear designer based in London, England, where he was born. He founded the international menswear brand Casely-Hayford at the age of 22 with his father, the acclaimed British fashion designer Joe Casely-Hayford OBE.
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).
Winston Branch OBE is a British artist originally from Saint Lucia, the sovereign island in the Caribbean Sea. He still has a home there, while maintaining a studio in California. Works by Branch are included in the collections of Tate Britain, the Legion of Honor De Young Museum in San Francisco, California, and the St Louis Museum of Art in Missouri. Branch was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1978, the British Prix de Rome, a DAAD Fellowship to Berlin, a sponsorship to Belize from the Organization of American States, and was Artist in Residence at Fisk University in Tennessee. He has been a professor of fine arts and has taught at several art institutions in London and in the US. He has also worked as a theatrical set designer with various theatre groups.
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.
Veronica Maudlyn Ryan is a Montserrat-born British sculptor. She moved to London with her parents when she was an infant and now lives between New York and Bristol. In December 2022, Ryan won the Turner Prize for her 'really poetic' work.
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.
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 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.
Margaret Henrietta Augusta Casely-Hayford CBE is a British lawyer, businesswoman and public figure who is active in the voluntary sector. She is in the forefront of working to create diversity on boards.
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.
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