Matthew Rarey

Assistant Professor of Art History Matthew Rarey's article, "Never at Rest: African Art at the University of Wisconsin" was published in the winter 2020 issue of African Arts. Rarey authored the essay along with Henry John Drewal, Evjue-Bascom Professor Emeritus of Art History and Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Assistant Professor of Art History Matthew Rarey's essay, "'And the Jet Would be Invaluable': Blackness, Bondage, and The Beloved" was published in the September 2020 issue of The Art Bulletin.

Andrea Gyorody, Ellen Johnson ‘33 Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and Matthew Francis Rarey, assistant professor of art history, have both received 2020 Curatorial Awards for Excellence from the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) for their Allen Memorial Art Museum exhibition “Afterlives of the Black Atlantic.” On view since August 2019, “Afterlives” has been chosen by the AAMC as the best exhibition this past year at an organization with an operating budget of under $5 million.

Matthew Rarey, assistant professor of art history, gave two invited lectures, both derived from his current book manuscript. On February 26, he delivered "Leave No Mark: Blackness Inviolate" at the Department of Religion, Amherst College. On March 6, he delivered "Pouches, Archives, and the Art of Survival" at the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University, where he is currently in residence as a visiting scholar for the 2018-2019 academic year.

Assistant Professor of Art History Matthew Rarey's article, "Assemblage, Occlusion, and the Art of Survival in the Black Atlantic" was published in the winter 2018 issue of African Arts.

Matthew Rarey, assistant professor of art history, is one of a select group of scholars invited to participate in "Black Modernisms," a two-part seminar series taking place in October 2018 and April 2019 at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The seminars are part of CASVA's new initiative to support research on African-American and African art.

Matthew Rarey, assistant professor of art history, delivered an invited lecture, "Glimpsing the Flight from Enslavement" at DePaul University in Chicago on October 18. The lecture was sponsored by the university's Department of the History of Art and Architecture, the Department of African and Black Diaspora Studies, and the Center for Black Diaspora.

Matthew Rarey, assistant professor of art history, was awarded a 2018-2019 Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for his book project, Insignificant Things: Assemblage, Occlusion, and the Art of Survival in the Black Atlantic. Professor Rarey is spending his fellowship year as a visiting scholar in the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University.

Matthew Rarey, assistant professor of art history, delivered his lecture, "Questions of Value and Bondage at a Hotel in London, March 1865" at the Center for Visual Culture at Bryn Mawr College. The lecture, which is based on an in-progress article, discusses Dante Gabriel Rossetti's 1866 painting, The Beloved, in the context of 19th century theories of race and sexuality, as well as transnational abolitionist dialogues.

Assistant Professor of Art History Matthew Rarey presented new work on the memorialization of the slave trade in Ghana in his presentation "Dirt, Concrete, and the Substance of Memory in Slavery's Dungeon" at Honoring Ancestors in Africa: Art and Actions held on April 6-7 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison .

Assistant Professor of Art History Matthew Rarey was one of a select group of invited participants to "The Future of African Art: A State of the Field Convening" at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, March 22-24. The gathering brought together curators, professors, independent scholars, and collectors of African art from three continents to discuss future directions and challenges in the study of African art history.