Bard Graduate Center and Bard
College today announced the joint appointment of Dr. Drew Thompson as Associate
Professor of Visual Culture and Black Studies beginning January 1, 2022. Dr. Thompson’s
research and teaching at BGC will focus on the art and material culture of
Africa and the African Diaspora, with courses on visual history and theory, the
art of decolonization, Black modernism, vernacular photography, and museums as
(de-)colonial spaces. At Bard College, he will teach an undergraduate course
that nurtures interests in the topics taught at BGC. Dr. Thompson’s expertise complements
the BGC faculty’s diverse interdisciplinary research, which includes Indigenous
material culture studies, urban archaeology, architectural history, fashion and
textiles studies, culinary history, conservation studies, and material science.
“Drew Thompson is an
exceptional scholar whose work explores the recent history of Lusophone Africa
and its diasporic extensions but also the relationship between art, technology,
and politics in Africa and the United States. We are thrilled that Dr. Thompson has chosen
to bring his expertise to BGC,” said
Peter N. Miller, Dean of Bard Graduate
Center. “I am delighted
that Professor Drew Thompson undertakes this new role at Bard Graduate Center.
He is expertly positioned to consider and interweave contemporary African and
African American art across multiple disciplines, and Bard College as a whole
will benefit from his track-record of innovative scholarship and public-facing
programming. This is an exciting new chapter for both Bard Graduate Center and
Bard’s Annandale community,” said
Christian Ayne Crouch, Dean of Graduate
Studies at Bard College.
Dr. Thompson
stated, “I have long admired Bard Graduate Center. My appointment brings an
unparalleled opportunity to advance BGC’s curriculum and public programming in
the areas of African and Black Diaspora visual and material culture.
Furthermore, I am excited to expand my own research into new areas, including
exhibition making, and to bring new constituencies to the conversation about
the role of art in society at the pivotal moment we are living. I am grateful
to BGC Director and Founder
Susan Weber and Dean Miller for their
foresight and vision in crafting this unique position.”
Dr. Thompson joins BGC
from Ryerson University’s School of Image Arts where he has served as Associate
Professor of Contemporary Art History and Visual Culture. Prior to his tenure
at Ryerson, Dr. Thompson was Assistant Professor of Historical and African
Studies (2013-2021) and Director of Africana Studies (2017-2020). In 2018, he
launched the interactive arts platform, “Creative Process in Dialogue: Art and
the Public Today,” which featured Elizabeth Alexander, Charles Burnett, Julie
Dash, Thelma Golden, Amy Sherald, and Bradford Young as invited speakers.
A writer and visual
historian, Thompson authored
Filtering Histories: The Photographic Bureaucracy
in Mozambique, 1960 to Recent Times (University of Michigan Press, 2021),
which features a study of the role of photography in Mozambique’s history as a
colony of Portugal and an independent nation. He is currently working on a
second book project, provisionally titled
Coloring Black Surveillance: The
Story of Polaroid in Africa, Anti-Apartheid Protest, and the
Contemporary Art World, which seeks to draw connections between the
development of instant color photography, the anti-apartheid struggle in South
Africa, and the use of Polaroids in US prisons. Thompson is also the guest
curator of an exhibition on the life and work of the late Black American printmaker
Benjamin Wigfall, which will open in Fall 2022 at the Samuel Dorksy Museum of
Art at SUNY New Paltz and then travel in Spring 2023 to the Virginia Museum of
Fine Arts.
Dr. Thompson earned his
B.A. in History and Art History from Williams College (2005) and his Ph.D. in
History from the University of Minnesota -Twin Cities (2013).
