Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation Distinguished Visitor in Fine Art: Krista Thompson

The Department of Art History is pleased to present the 2023 Ydessa Hendeles Foundation Distinguished Visitor in Fine Art Lecture.

In January 1969, the electronic light sculptor Tom Lloyd became a founding member of the Art Workers’ Coalition, a group of artists and critics who pressured New York’s mainstream museums to be more inclusive in the range of artists they exhibited and collected. This talk examines Lloyd’s labors within and beyond the group. I focus on his use of Black Art Study, his engagement with study as a site, tactic, and medium to center Black and Puerto Rican art and revolutionize museums. Art historical considerations of information and research-based art and social practice may be expanded by exploring Lloyd’s (and his collaborator, Faith Ringgold’s) use of polls and surveys, his efforts to start a center devoted to Black and Puerto Rican art at the Museum of Modern art, and his design of neighborhood Illuminated Sound Environments, which were attentive to the aesthetics of Black life. 

About the speaker
Krista Thompson is the Mary Jane Crowe Professor of Art History, and affiliated faculty in the Department of African American Studies and the Department of Performance Studies. She is the author of An Eye for the Tropics and Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice and the co-editor (with Claire Tancons) of En Mas’: Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean. Currently, she is working on Black Light, a manuscript about Tom Lloyd, electronic light, and archival recovery in African American art.