Sheehan speaks at Black Portraitures conference in Florence

Associate Professor of Art Tanya Sheehan spoke at a major international conference, Black Portraitures II: Imaging the Black Body and Re-Staging Histories, organized by New York University and Harvard University. Held in Florence on May 28-31, 2015, the conference brought together artists and scholars from many disciplines and practices, including art history, fashion, dance, theater, and studio art, in wide-ranging conversations about imaging the black body. Sheehan’s paper took a close look at the recent inclusion of popular visual culture in the multivolume series, The Image of the Black in Western Art. The critical attention paid to mass-produced, stereotypical images of people of African descent in the series presents an important opportunity to reflect on the value of keeping such images “alive” and visible in the twenty-first century.