Harney, Elizabeth
Associate Professor
Graduate Department of Art
University of Toronto
Canada
Biography
As a scholar, curator and critic of modern and contemporary African art, my research documents, analyzes and publicizes the work of artists who have been active in Africa and its diaspora since the beginning of the 20th century. I engage broadly with the scholarship, across disciplines, which is now re-defining the ways we understand the global faces of modernity. African painters, sculptors, photographers and other “modern” artists have been ignored or marginalized, even when they have participated in the great artistic movements of the 20th century. In my art historical writings, I have tried to complicate these interactions between artistic modernism and Africa’s arts and artists. In my curatorial and art critical practices, I have been particularly interested in contemporary artists whose work helps us think through the archive of modernity.
Research Interest
Modern and Contemporary, African
