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  • Published: 10 July 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529119473
  • Imprint: Merky Books Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 176

Reframing Blackness

What’s Black about "History of Art"?

  • Alayo Akinkugbe



An original and wide-ranging riposte to the current understanding of Blackness in Western art and museums, from an upcoming curator and founder of @ABlackHistoryOfArt

\"Akinkugbe is a brilliant new writer and thinker challenging art history. This book is urgent, essential, accessible and it needs to be on every art history reading list.\" -- Bernardine Evaristo

Since the inception of mainstream art history, Blackness has been distinctly ignored.

In Reframing Blackness, art historian and founder of @ABlackHistoryOfArt, Alayo Akinkugbe challenges this void.

Exploring the presentation of Black figures in Western art, as well as Blackness in museums, in feminist art movements and in the curriculum, Alayo unveils an overlooked but integral part of our collective art history.

Refreshing and accessible, this promises to start a much-needed conversation in culture and education.

  • Published: 10 July 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529119473
  • Imprint: Merky Books Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 176

Praise for Reframing Blackness

"[Reframing Blackness] fills in gaping holes in institutional education, and contemporary art galleries, I wish I had a resource like this when I was growing up, but it's equally as impactful in my adulthood."

Ronan Mckenzie, photographer, designer and curator

If reading Gombrich left you with questions, well, these are many of the answers. A fearless, timely evisceration of so much of the Art History that we have taken for granted, and a rigorous and deeply compelling alternative way of seeing is proffered in its place. Mandatory reading.

Dr Gus Casely-Hayford, director of V&A East