University of Toronto
I am an art historian from Brooklyn, New York, living in Toronto, Ontario. In 2022, I became an assistant professor at the University of Toronto after receiving my PhD from the Graduate Center, CUNY.
My writings have been published or are forthcoming in American Art, The Art Bulletin, Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, NKA: Journal of the Contemporary African Art, and Smarthistory. In 2026, I was awarded the Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize by The Art Bulletin. My research has been supported by fellowships from the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Getty Research Center.
My writings have been published or are forthcoming in American Art, The Art Bulletin, Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, NKA: Journal of the Contemporary African Art, and Smarthistory. In 2026, I was awarded the Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize by The Art Bulletin. My research has been supported by fellowships from the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Getty Research Center.
As a specialist in the art of African Diaspora in North America, I study histories of Black radicalism and their impact on the discipline of art history. I am particularly interested in questions of methodology and historiography, and I look to Black Studies to find alternatives to art history’s stifling reliance on the logics and values of whiteness. I am currently working on two books: an art historical study of 1960s Harlem and a new project tentatively titled “Art History after Attica.”
A broad set of political investments informs my art historical work: I frequently look to public intellectuals on the socialist Left to help define the stakes of my scholarship. Figures like Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Astra Taylor, Robin D.G. Kelley, Miriam Kaba, Sarah Jaffe, Naomi Klein, and Daniel Denvir have taught me to think critically about the wide-scale ravages of capitalism (from slavery to mass incarceration, climate change to genocide) and to think broadly about the forms political change can take. I study art to get at the complexities simplified by a liberal worldview, where struggles are siloed, individualism is rewarded, and reform is privileged above all else. I believe art helps us see beyond what is “practical” or even "imaginable” and thus is critical in helping those who seek alternatives to the status quo to see (and organize and build) otherwise.
Whenever possible, I connect my research with grassroots political struggles within and beyond academia. From 2017 to 2022, I served as a delegate to the Professional Staff Congress, the union representing faculty, staff, and students at CUNY. I also served as chapter chair and vice chair during this time, working with colleagues across the university to fight for public higher education in New York, the city where I was born and raised.
In my spare time, I play cello with the Toronto Community Orchestra. I love cooking and playing with my two cats, Sandy and Keanu.
In my spare time, I play cello with the Toronto Community Orchestra. I love cooking and playing with my two cats, Sandy and Keanu.