2008 Porter Colloquium: Speakers

2008 Porter Colloquium Keynote Speaker and Distinguished Lecturer

Kobena Mercer
2008 Colloquium Keynote Address
Kobena Mercer is a writer and critic living in London. His most recent work, "Exiles, Diasporas & Stranger", is the latest volume in the groundbreaking series Annotating Art's Histories: Cross-Cultural Perspectives in the Visual Arts.
     He is also the editor of the series' previous volumes "Pop Art and Vernacular Cultures, Cosmopolitan Modernisms," and "Discrepant Abstraction" (co-published by The MIT Press and inIVA) and author of "Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies."
     Mercer writes and teaches on the visual arts of the Black Diaspora and is an inaugural recipient of the 2006 Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing. Mercer was a Reader in Art History and Diaspora Studies at Middlesex University, London, and has taught at New York University and University of California at Santa Cruz, and has received fellowships from Cornell University and the New School University in New York.
     Mercer's critical work has continued to open new lines of enquiry in art, film, and photography, and his writings feature in several landmark anthologies, including Out There (1990), Cultural Studies (1992), Art and Its Histories (1998) and Theorizing Diaspora (2003). His monographs include James VanDer Zee, Adrian Piper, Issac Julien, Keith Piper and Rotimi Fani-Kayode.
     Mercer received his Ph.D. in Sociology, University of London Goldsmiths' College.

Franklin Sirmans
2008 James A. Porter Distinguished Lecturer
A dynamic curator, writer, editor and lecturer, Franklin Sirmans is the 19th Annual James A. Porter Colloquium Distinguished Lecturer. Sirmans is presently the curator of modern and contemporary art at the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas and the 2007 recipient of the High Museum’s David C. Driskell Prize for his outstanding contribution to African American art and art history.
      A former U.S. Editor of Flash Art and Editor-in-Chief of Art AsiaPacific magazines, Sirmans has written for several journals and newspapers on art and culture, including The New York Times, Newsweek International, Art in America, ArtNews, Grand Street and Essence Magazine.
      As an innovative curator, Sirmans has developed an ever challenging an important body of exhibitions including Basquiat (2005-06: Brooklyn Museum, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), Make It Now: New Sculpture in New York at Sculpture Center; One Planet Under A Groove: Contemporary Art and Hip Hop (2001-2003: Bronx Museum of Art, Spelman College Art Gallery, Atlanta, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and Villa Stuck, Munich, Germany); Ralph Bunche: Diplomat for Peace and Justice at the Queens Museum of Art (2004); Americas Remixed in Milan, Italy; Mass Appeal in Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax and Sackville, Canada; and annual exhibitions for Atlanta (2003), Baltimore (2005) and Los Angeles (1999).
      His curatorial work has also extended to several exhibitions organized for commercial galleries including A Moments Notice in Houston, Things Fall Apart in Chicago, Notorious Impropriety in Boston, Color Theory in Torino, and New Video in Seoul; and New Wave, The Color of Sound, Summer Jam, Retroactive I and Rumors of War in New York.
      Sirmans has edited numerous catalogues on contemporary art including Transforming the Crown: African, Asian and Caribbean Artists in Britain, (University of Chicago Press), Jean-Michel Basquiat (Tony Shafrazi Gallery), Freestyle and Black Belt at The Studio Museum in Harlem, and contributed to Gary Simmons at the MCA, Chicago and Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970 (Contemporary Art Museum, Houston), in addition to several monographs on artists including Edgar Arceneaux, Monika Bravo, iona rozeal brown, Mia Enell, Manuel Esnoz, Charles Gaines, Kojo Griffin, Dario Robleto and Kehinde Wiley.
      Sirmans received his B.A. in Art History and English from Wesleyan University.

2008 Colloquium
This year’s presentation of the Howard University Department of Art’s James A. Porter Colloquium is presented in conjunction with the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the African Diaspora and the Howard University Gallery of Art.

Admission to all Colloquium sessions and lectures is free and open to the public.