Christa Clarke

Indepedent Scholar

10/09/2019 - 11/06/2019

Christa Clarke, an independent scholar and curator, is a specialist in historic and contemporary arts of global Africa. As the former Senior Curator, Arts of Global Africa at the Newark Museum, she organized numerous exhibitions ranging from men’s fashion to Nigerian modernism and stewarded several hundred acquisitions, including major commissions by Odili Odita, Yinka Shonibare and Simone Leigh. Clarke has held fellowships at the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Harvard's DuBois Institute, and taught at NYU Abu Dhabi, University of Pennsylvania, George Washington University, and Rutgers University. Her publications include "Representing Africa in American Art Museums" (2010) and "African Art at the Barnes Foundation" (2015). At the Clark, she will be working with colleague Adrienne Childs on an exhibition and publication, “Black Baroque,” exploring the “baroque turn” in contemporary arts of Africa and its diaspora.