Antawan I. Byrd

Antawan I. Byrd is associate curator, Photography and Media, at the Art Institute of Chicago. Since joining the museum in 2017, he has contributed to the exhibition Volta Photo: Starring Sanlé Sory and the People of Bobo-Dioulasso in the Small but Musically Mighty Country of Burkina Faso (2018) and curated and co-edited the catalogue for The People Shall Govern! Medu Art Ensemble and the Anti-Apartheid Poster (2019) with Felicia Mings. He recently curated Mimi Cherono Ng’ok: Closer to the Earth, Closer to My Own Body, the first solo presentation in the United States of the Kenyan-born photographer.
Antawan specializes in modern and contemporary art of Africa and the African diaspora with a particular focus on histories of photography, sound, urbanism, and popular culture. In addition to his role at the museum, he serves as assistant professor of art history at Northwestern University. He received the Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Arts Council of the African Studies Association in 2017, and his research has been supported by an Andrew Mellon-CLIR fellowship, a Mellon-COSI fellowship, and a Fulbright fellowship.
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Toward a Borderless Imagination
The curatorial team of Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica introduces one of Pan-Africanism’s key tenets: the idea of remapping the world.
Antawan I. Byrd, Adom Getachew, and Matthew S. Witkovsky -
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A Tenderness of Heart: Mimi Cherono Ng’ok on Connection and Image Making
With her photographs and debut film, the Kenyan artist aims to collapse the distance between object and viewer.
Antawan I. Byrd and Mimi Cherono Ng'ok