Multiple Modernisms

Twentieth-Century Artistic Modernisms in Global Perspective

 

Mathias Kauage, Independence Celebration, screenprint, 1975, Papua New Guinea

Mathias Kauage, Independence Celebration, screenprint, 1975, Papua New Guinea

 Multiple Modernisms: Twentieth Century Artistic Modernisms in Global Perspective is a research project that explores what might be called the ‘other histories’ of modernism in art, focusing particularly on indigenous modernisms from Africa, North America, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. The participants, a distinguished group of art historians from various parts of the world, will document and analyze the diverse lives that modernism had across these regions during the twentieth century, which have been left out of all the standard histories. An ambitious and comparative re-imagining of the cross-currents constitutive of modernism globally, the project will publish new research on artists’ lives, works and travels in a series of books focused on different themes. It will also organise four public symposia in partnership with leading museums and universities in Ottawa (2012), Cambridge UK (2013), Wellington (2014) and Johannesburg and Cape Town (2016).

 

Multiple Modernisms: Twentieth Century Artistic Modernisms in Global Perspective is supported by the Leverhulme Trust in association with the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge.