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Reframing Blackness
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  • Published: 24 November 2026
  • ISBN: 9781529186420
  • Imprint: Merky Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $29.99

Reframing Blackness

What’s Black about "History of Art"?

Formats & editions
Paperback
24 Nov 2026
Hardback
21 Oct 2025
EBook
10 July 2025
Audiobook
10 July 2025
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An original and wide-ranging riposte to the current understanding of Blackness in Western art and museums, from an upcoming curator and founder of @ABlackHistoryOfArt

\"Akinkugbe is a brilliant new writer and thinker challenging art history. This book is urgent, essential, accessible and it needs to be on every art history reading list.\" -- Bernardine Evaristo

Since the inception of mainstream art history, Blackness has been distinctly ignored.

In Reframing Blackness, art historian and founder of @ABlackHistoryOfArt, Alayo Akinkugbe challenges this void.

Exploring the presentation of Black figures in Western art, as well as Blackness in museums, in feminist art movements and in the curriculum, Alayo unveils an overlooked but integral part of our collective art history.

Refreshing and accessible, this promises to start a much-needed conversation in culture and education.
  • Published: 24 November 2026
  • ISBN: 9781529186420
  • Imprint: Merky Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $29.99
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About the author

Alayo Akinkugbe

Alayo Akinkugbe graduated from the University of Cambridge with a BA in History of Art in 2021 and graduated with an MA in Curating the Art Museum from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2023. She runs the Instagram platform @ABlackHistoryofArt, which highlights Black artists, sitters, curators and thinkers from art history and the present day; and hosts the podcast A Shared Gaze. Alayo is a contributing editor and writes the column ‘Black Gazes’ for AnOther Magazine. She was awarded a curatorial research grant by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art for the exhibition Entangled Pasts: Art Colonialism and Change at the Royal Academy of Arts. Alayo was on the advisory panel and contributed to the book African Artists: From 1882 to Now, published by Phaidon in 2021, and has written for publications including Dazed, Tate Etc. and The World of Interiors. Reframing Blackness is her first book.
portrait photo of Alayo Akinkugbe

Praise for Reframing Blackness

If reading Gombrich left you with questions, well, these are many of the answers. A fearless, timely evisceration of so much of the Art History that we have taken for granted, and a rigorous and deeply compelling alternative way of seeing is proffered in its place. Mandatory reading.

Dr Gus Casely-Hayford, director of V&A East

"[Reframing Blackness] fills in gaping holes in institutional education, and contemporary art galleries, I wish I had a resource like this when I was growing up, but it's equally as impactful in my adulthood."

Ronan Mckenzie, photographer, designer and curator