Christa Clarke

The Newark Museum

July–August 2009

Christa Clarke, a specialist in historic and contemporary arts of Africa, is senior curator of Arts of Africa and the Americas, and curator of Arts of Africa at the Newark Museum. Prior to this appointment, she served as the first curator of African art at the Neuberger Museum of Art and was a curatorial advisor for the Barnes Foundation, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Kreeger Museum, and the World Bank. She has also held teaching appointments at George Washington University, the Corcoran School of Art, Rutgers University, and Purchase College, SUNY, and fellowships at the National Museum of African Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Clarke is the author of several exhibition catalogues and articles, including an essay on exhibiting African art in Art and its Publics: Museum Studies for the New Millenium (2003) and The Art of Africa: A Resource for Educators, published in 2006 for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A forthcoming book, Representing Africa in American Art Museums: A Century of Collecting and Display (co-edited with Kathleen Bickford Berzock; Seattle, 2010), examines the impact that museum practice has on the formation of meaning and the public perception of African art.