Chika Okeke-Agulu
Artist, Critic, Art Historian
Director, Africa World Initiative; Robert Schirmer Professor of Art and Archaeology and African American Studies, Princeton University
Chika Okeke-Agulu, an artist, critic and art historian, is director of Africa World Initiative and the Robert Schirmer Professor of Art and Archaeology and African American Studies at Princeton. He is co-editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, a member of the board of trustees of Global Studies University, Sharjah, UAE, and fellow of the British Academy. His books include “El Anatsui: The Reinvention of Sculpture” (2022), “Yusuf Grillo: Painting. Lagos. Life” (2020), “Obiora Udechukwu: Line, Image, Text” (2016), “Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth Century Nigeria” (2015) and “Contemporary African Art Since 1980” (2010). He was the Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford and chair of the international jury for the Decolonial Memorial commission, Berlin (2023). In 2024, he served as a member of the international jury at the 60th Venice Biennale. His awards include the Melville J. Herskovits Prize for the most important scholarly work in African studies published in English during the preceding year (2016) and the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism (2016).