Mora Beauchamp-Byrd
Director of Museum & Cultural Heritage Studies
Associate Professor
Art of the African Diaspora;
Global Modern & Contemporary Art;
Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies
PhD Duke University
mbeauchampbyrd@fsu.edu
3021 William Johnston Building
Research and Teaching Areas
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- Art and Visual Culture of the Americas, with a focus on Modern and Contemporary African American Art and Caribbean Art
- Art of the African diaspora, including a focus on the New Orleans-based photographer Arthur P. Bedou (1882-1966)
- British Art, including appropriations of William Hogarth’s 18th-century graphic narratives by David Hockney, Lubaina Himid, and Paula Rego, and The Black Arts Movement in Britain in the 1980s and 90s
- Comics Studies, with a focus on representations of race, class and gender in animation, comic strips, and comic books in the U.S., and African American newspaper comic strips during the Golden Age of Comics (1938-1955)
- Global Modern and Contemporary Art
- Museum and Curatorial Studies
Dr. Mora Beauchamp-Byrd is an Associate Professor of Art History and Director of Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies at Florida State University. An art historian, arts administrator, and curator, she specializes in the art and visual culture of the African Diaspora; Art of the Americas, with a focus on Modern & Contemporary African American art and Caribbean art; British art, including appropriations of the 18th-century graphic narratives of William Hogarth, and The Black Arts Movement in Britain during the 1980s and 90s; Global modern & contemporary art; Museum & Curatorial studies; and representations of race, class and gender in American comics, with an emphasis on animation and African American newspaper comics during the Golden Age of Comics (1938-1955).
In recent years, she has taught courses such as Art of the United States; Art of the African Diaspora; Art Since 1960; The Black Atlantic; Black Popular Culture (Race and Gender in American Comics); Contemporary Art; History of American Comics; History of Graphic Design; Intro to Africana Studies; Intro. to Global Art; Intro to Museum and Curatorial Studies; Mining the Museum; Modern Art; Modern and Contemporary African American Art; Museum Practicum I, II and III; and 20th Century Art.
Beauchamp-Byrd has organized numerous exhibitions including Transforming the Crown: African, Asian and Caribbean Artists in Britain, 1966-1996 (presented at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Caribbean Cultural Center, and The Studio Museum in Harlem); When I Am Not Here/Estoy Alla: Photographs by Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons; Struggle and Serenity: The Visionary Art of Elizabeth Catlett; Transcending Silence: The Life and Poetic Legacy of Audre Lorde; Petrona Morrison and Veronica Ryan: Sculptural Works; The Worldview of Katherine Dunham; Picturing Creole New Orleans: The Photographs of Arthur P. Bedou ; and Little Nemo’s Progress: Animation and Contemporary Art.
Currently, she is completing a manuscript focused on the early to mid-twentieth-century portraiture of the New Orleans-born photographer Arthur P. Bedou (1882-1966).
Since 2020, Dr. Beauchamp-Byrd has been a member of the Board of Directors of the College Art Association (CAA), where she served on the Executive Committee as Vice President for Publications from 2021-2023. Since 2021, she has also served as an Exhibition Reviews Co-Editor at Panorama, Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art.
Advisees
Selected Publications
“Al Hollingsworth’s Kandy (1955): Race, Colorism and Romance in African American Newspaper Comics of the Golden Age,” Public. chapter in Qiana Whitted, ed., Desegregating Comics: Debating Blackness in Early American Comics, 1900-1960 (Rutgers Univ. Press/May 2023).
“The Afterlives of Transforming the Crown: Black British Art and the Survey Exhibition,” in Conference Proceedings publication for Reshaping the Field: Arts of the African Diasporas on Display (Nov. 2021), organized by Nana Adusei-Poku, Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (London: Afterall Press, and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2022).
“Black People Dressed Up is What I Knew: Rita Keegan’s Performative Self-Portraiture,” in Matthew Harle and Rita Keegan, eds., Mirror Reflecting Darkly: The Rita Keegan Archive (London: Goldsmiths Press/MIT Press, 2021).
“Joiri Minaya’s Cloaking of the statue of Christopher Columbus (2019): Redressing and Cleansing,” article in ReVista, the Harvard Review of Latin America, edited by June Carolyn Erlick, pub. Aug. 30, 2021 (part of Spotlight: Monuments and Counter-Monuments, Spring-Summer 2021, Vol. XX, No. 3).
“Cut-outs and ‘Silent Companions’: Theatricality and Satire in Lubaina Himid’s `A Fashionable Marriage,’ Burlington Contemporary, Issue 2, November 2019.
“Mickey’s White Gloves: Animation, Performance and Contemporary Art,” brochure essay for exhibition entitled “Little Nemo’s Progress: Animation and Contemporary Art,” Oklahoma State University Museum of Art, on view August through December, 2019.
“John Scott’s Ocean Song: Picturing Congo Square in Late 20th Century New Orleans,” article as part of Visual Arts-themed section (“Visual Arts” section, entitled Rivers and Oceans: Navigating Pictorial Legacies of Enslavement in New Orleans and Bristol, produced in collaboration with Dr. Shawn Sobers, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK), in Dr. Lucienne Loh and Dr. Carolyn M. Jones Medine, editors, Journal of Global Slavery (JGS)/Brill: Special Issue, “Contemporary Legacies of Tran-Atlantic Slavery,” Feb. 2019.
“John McCrady’s “Southern Eccentric” Regionalism: Negro Maskers from the “Mardi Gras Day” series of 1948,” Public. chapter for edited volume entitled Walking Raddy: The Baby Dolls of New Orleans, Dr. Kim Vaz-Deville, ed., University Press of Mississippi, 2018.
“Spirit House: John Scott’s Iconographic Portraits of New Orleans,” Guest Editorial essay for Thematic Update/Community Spotlight re: New Orleans; Oxford African American Studies Center, Henry Louis Gates, Editor-in-Chief (Oxford University Press, 2015).
“African Americans in New Orleans: A Visual History,” Guest Editorial Photo-essay for Thematic Update/Community Spotlight re: New Orleans, Oxford African American Studies Center; Henry Louis Gates, Editor-in-Chief (Oxford University Press, 2015).
“London Bridge: Late 20th Century British Art and the Routes of “National Culture,” (Recollections section), Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture 12, Vol. 7, Issue 2, Fall 2013 (Special issue, edited by Eddie Chambers, re: Black Artists in Europe).
“Everyday People: Vanley Burke and the Ghetto as Genre,” in Back to Black: Art, Cinema and the Racial Imaginary, exhibition catalogue, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK, 2005 (Including contributors Richard J. Powell, David A. Bailey and Petrine Archer-Straw (exhibition co-curators), Kellie Jones, Kathleen Cleaver, Kodwo Eshun, Manthia Diawara and Paul Gilroy).
“Raised to the Trade: An Introduction,” in Raised to the Trade: Creole Building Arts of New Orleans, curatorial essay in exhibition catalogue, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA, 2002 (Including contributors Dr. Jay D. Edwards, Dr. Nick Spitzer and Dr. John Michael Vlach).
Publications in Progress
“Manicured Blackness and White Space: Geoffrey Holder and New York School-Era Ad Campaigns,” chapter in Geoffrey Holder: Prismatic Blackness, Erica Moiah James, ed., part of The Geoffey Holder Project, organized in cooperation with The Geoffrey Holder Family Archive and The University of Miami, (Duke University Press/public. forthcoming 2024).
“The Transatlantic Afterlife of Transforming the Crown: Black British Art and the Survey Exhibition,” conference proceedings publication (entitled After the Black Arts Movement in Britain: Framing the Critical Decade), from the 2016 Framing the Critical Decade: After the Black Arts Movement conf., The Univ. of Bristol, UK (Bloomsbury Academic/pub. forthcoming 2024).
“African American Comics,” article for Oxford Bibliographies in African American Studies; Dr. Gene Jarrett, Editor in chief (Oxford University Press; pub. forthcoming 2023).