Kobena Mercer
{{Short description|British art historian and writer}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2015}}
{{Use British English|date=July 2015}}
Kobena Mercer (born 1960)[http://www.iniva.org/library/archive/people/m/mercer_kobena "Kobena Mercer - Writer"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160806012001/http://iniva.org/library/archive/people/m/mercer_kobena |date=6 August 2016 }}, Iniva. is a British art historian and writer on contemporary art and visual culture. His writing on Robert Mapplethorpe and Rotimi Fani-Kayode has been described as "among the most incisive (and delightful to read) critiques of simple identity-based politics in the field of cultural studies."Tinkcom, M. & Villarejo, A., 2001. Keyframes: Popular Cinema and Cultural Studies, pp. 24, Psychology Press.
Life and work
Mercer was born in London in 1960. He was educated in Ghana and England and graduated with a bachelor's degree in Fine Art at Saint Martins School of Art. He gained his doctorate by completing a PhD at Goldsmiths College in 1990.Durden, M., 2013. Fifty Key Writers on Photography, Routledge.
Much of Mercer's writing has focused on the work and cultural context of black British artists, including monographs for Keith Piper, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Hew LockeMercer, K., 2011. Hew Locke: Stranger in Paradise, Black Dog Publishing. – as well as on contemporary and modern art of the African Diaspora more widely.{{cite web|url=http://arthistory.yale.edu/faculty/faculty/faculty_mercer.html|title=Kobena Mercer page on Yale website|access-date=24 March 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140607011739/http://arthistory.yale.edu/faculty/faculty/faculty_mercer.html|archive-date=7 June 2014|url-status=dead}} He has contributed essays to numerous anthologies in the fields of cultural studies and contemporary art, including his own, groundbreaking volume, Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies, published in 1994.Walcott, R., 1996. Book Review: Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies, by Kobena Mercer, New York: Routledge, 1994. Critical Sociology, 22(2), pp. 141–144. Mercer was commissioned to contribute "New Practices, New Identities: Hybridity and Globalization," the closing chapter in the epic series The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume V, The Twentieth Century (Harvard University Press, 2014).
In 2006, Mercer won the inaugural Clark Prize for excellence in art writing.{{cite web|url=https://www.clarkart.edu/about/clark-prize/2006-mercer,-nochlin,-and-tomkins|title=2006 Clark Prize winners|website=The Clark|access-date=8 April 2021}} Alongside his work as a writer, Mercer also has a distinguished international career as an academic, teaching first at Middlesex University and, more recently, as Professor of History of Art and African American Studies at Yale. It was announced in February 2021 that Bard College had appointed Mercer the Charles P. Stevenson Chair in Art History and the Humanities, and that he would assume the position in fall 2021.{{cite web|url=https://www.bard.edu/news/kobena-mercer-joins-bard-college-faculty-2021-02-17|title=Kobena Mercer Joins Bard College Faculty|website=Bard News|publisher=Bard|date= 17 February 2021|access-date=8 April 2021}}
In 2023, Mercer received a PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award for Alain Locke & The Visual Arts (Yale University Press, 2022).
Selected bibliography
- {{cite book|title=Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780415906357|url-access=registration|year=1994|publisher=Routledge|isbn= 9780415906357|author=Kobena Mercer}}
- {{cite book|title=Keith Piper: Relocating the Remains|year=1997|publisher=InIVA|isbn=978-1899846108|author=Kobena Mercer|author2=David Chandler|author3=Gilane Tawadros}}
- {{cite book|title=James Van Der Zee 55|year=2003|publisher=Phaidon|isbn=978-0714841694|author=Kobena Mercer}}
- {{cite book|title=Exiles, Diasporas and Strangers (Annotating Art's Histories: Cross-Cultural Perspectives in the Visual Arts)|year=2008|publisher=The MIT Press|isbn=978-0262633581|editor=Kobena Mercer }}
- {{cite book|title=Cosmopolitan Modernisms|year=2005|publisher=Institute of International Visual Arts (INIVA)|isbn=978-1899846412|editor=Kobena Mercer}}
- "New Practices, New Identities: Hybridity and Globalization" in {{cite book|title=The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume V, The Twentieth Century|year=2014|publisher=Harvard University Press|editor=David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates, Jr}}
Notes
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External links
- [https://afamstudies.yale.edu/people/kobena-mercer Yale website] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210417114936/https://afamstudies.yale.edu/people/kobena-mercer |date=17 April 2021 }}
- [http://www.iniva.org/library/archive/people/m/mercer_kobena] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160806012001/http://iniva.org/library/archive/people/m/mercer_kobena |date=6 August 2016 }} InIVA website
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20140324142715/http://www.clarkart.edu/about/content.cfm?ID=455 "Previous Clark Prize Recipients"], Clark Art Institute website
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Category:English art historians
Category:Alumni of Saint Martin's School of Art
Category:Alumni of the Royal College of Art
Category:Black British writers
Category:Black British artists