Conversation: The Power of Print—How Magazines Shape Panafrica
@ The Art Institute of Chicago
111 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60603
Opening Thursday, January 23rd, from 6PM - 7PM
Through magazines like Ebony and Jet, the Chicago-based Johnson Publishing Company, founded in 1942, connected audiences across the African diaspora, profoundly shaping perceptions of African and African diasporic cultures. In the 1950s, Pan-African publications like South Africa’s Drum and Zonk! and Senegal’s Bingo brought new voices to this global circulation that covered politics, music, fashion, art, and more.
Join Leslie M. Wilson, Esmeralda Kale, and Steven D. Booth for an exploration of these publications and their crucial roles in shaping Pan-Africanism.
About the Speakers
Leslie M. Wilson is academic curator and director of research programs at the Art Institute. Her research, teaching, and curatorial work focuses on the history of photography, the arts of Africa and the African diaspora, modern and contemporary American art, and museum studies. In 2023, she co-curated David Goldblatt: No Ulterior Motive at the Art Institute, and curated not all realisms: photography, Africa, and the long 1960s at the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago. She holds a Ph.D from the University of Chicago.
Esmeralda Kale is the George and Mary LeCron Foster Curator of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University. She trained as an African Studies librarian at University College London and has worked at institutions worldwide, including the University of Swaziland, Rhodes University, and Zayed University. She joined the Herskovits Library in 2003 as a bibliographer and became head curator in 2014.
Steven D. Booth (he/him) is an archivist, independent researcher, and member of the Blackivists, a collective of trained Black memory workers in the Chicagoland area. He is currently managing archivist of the Johnson Publishing Company Archive (JPC Archive), which is co-owned by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
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Tags: Chicago, Conversation: The Power of Print—How Magazines Shape Panafrica, Esmeralda Kale, Leslie M. Wilson, Loop, Steven D. Booth, The Art Institute of Chicago
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