Education
Ph.D., Art History, Duke University
M.A., Art History, Columbia University
M.A., Visual Arts Administration, New York University
B.A., Art History, New York University
Bio
Dr. Mora J. Beauchamp-Byrd is a Teaching Assistant Professor at Oklahoma State University, where she teaches courses in Africana Studies and in Art History. An art historian, curator, and arts administrator, she has taught at Duke University, Spelman College, The University of Tampa and Xavier University of New Orleans. Since 2020, she has been a member of the Board of Directors of the College Art Association (CAA), where she currently serves on the Executive Committee as Vice President for Publications.
She has held numerous curatorial and administrative positions at cultural and educational institutions such as the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University in New Orleans, where she was Director and Curator of the Visual Arts Department; The Caribbean Cultural Center (NY), where served as Curator and Director of Special Projects; The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, where she was Assistant Director for Mellon Initiatives in the Research and Academic Program, and the New Orleans African American Museum of Art, Culture and History (NOAAM), where she served as Interim Executive Director.
She has organized numerous exhibitions, including Little Nemo’s Progress: Animation and Contemporary Art; Picturing Creole New Orleans: The Photographs of Arthur P. Bedou; Struggle and Serenity: The Visionary Art of Elizabeth Catlett; Transcending Silence: The Life and Poetic Legacy of Audre Lorde; Transforming the Crown: African, Asian and Caribbean Artists in Britain, 1966-1996, and When I Am Not Here/Estoy Alla: Photographs by Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons.
Areas of Specialization
American Art, with a focus on Modern & Contemporary African American art; Art of the African Diaspora; British Art, including the eighteenth-century graphic narratives of William Hogarth and contemporary appropriations of these works, modern and contemporary British art with an emphasis on art by UK-based African, Asian and Caribbean Artists, and the Black Arts Movement in Britain; Curatorial Studies/Museum Studies; Modern & Contemporary Art; and intersections of race, class, and gender in American comics.
Courses Taught
Intro to Africana Studies
African American Arts and Culture
Art of the African Diaspora
Art Since 1960
Black Popular Culture
History of American Comics
History of Graphic Design
Intro to Museum & Curatorial Studies
Intro to Global Art
20th-Century Art
Selected Publications
“The Afterlives of Transforming the Crown: Black British Art and the Survey Exhibition,” in Conf. Proceedings publication for Reshaping the Field: Arts of the African Diasporas on Display, organized by Nana Adusei-Poku, Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard), Nov. 6, 2021 (London: Afterall Press and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, forthcoming 2022).
“Black People Dressed Up is What I Knew”: Rita Keegan’s Performative Self-Portraiture,” in Matthew Harle and Rita Keegan, ed., Mirror Reflecting Darkly: The Rita Keegan Archive (London: Goldsmiths Press and Cambridge, Ma: 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).
“Al Hollingsworth’s Kandy (1955): Race, Colorism and Romance in African American Newspaper Comics of the Golden Age,” Chapter in Qiana Whitted, ed., Desegregating Comics: Debating Blackness in Early American Comics, 1900-1960 (Rutgers University Press/forthcoming 2022).
“Cut-outs and ‘Silent Companions’: Theatricality and Satire in Lubaina Himid’s `A Fashionable Marriage,’ Burlington Contemporary, Issue 2, November 2019.
“John Scott’s Ocean Song: Picturing Congo Square in Late 20th Century New Orleans,” article in Rivers and Oceans: Navigating Pictorial Legacies of Enslavement in New Orleans and Bristol (section produced in collab. with Dr. Shawn Sobers), in Dr. Lucienne Loh and Dr. Carolyn M. Jones Medine, eds., Journal of Global Slavery, Brill: Special Issue, “Contemporary Legacies of Trans-Atlantic Slavery,” Feb. 2019.
Bartlett 102
mora.beauchamp-byrd@okstate.edu