Photo credit: Rodrigo Salido Moulinié
Ep. 248 Adrienne L. Childs is an independent scholar, art historian, and curator. She is Senior Consulting Curator at The Phillips Collection. Her current book is an exploration of Black figures in European decorative arts entitled Ornamental Blackness: The Black Figure in European Decorative Arts, published by Yale University Press. She is currently co-curator of Vivian Browne: My Kind of Protest for The Phillips Collection. She recently co-curated The Colour of Anxiety: Race, Sexuality and Disorder in Victorian Sculpture at The Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, England. She was the guest curator of Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition at The Phillips Collection in Washington DC, 2020.
In April 2022 The High Museum of Art awarded Childs the 2022 Driskell Prize in recognition of her contribution to African American art and art history.
Childs co-curated The Black Figure in the European Imaginary at The Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College in 2017. She is co-editor of the volume essays Blacks and Blackness in European Art of the Long Nineteenth Century, Routledge. She also contributed an essay on art and activism to Volume V, part II of The Image of the Black in Western Art edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and David Bindman.
As former curator at the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland she curated many exhibitions including Her Story: Lithographs by Margo Humphrey; Arabesque: The Art of Stephanie Pogue; Creative Spirit: The Art of David C. Driskell and Tradition Redefined: The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African American Art.
Childs holds a BA from Georgetown University, an MBA from Howard University and a PhD in the History of Art from the University of Maryland.
Website https://www.adriennelchilds.com/
Phillips Collection
Vivian Browne: My Kind of Protest | The Phillips Collectionhttps://www.phillipscollection.org/sites/default/files/2025-04/phillips-collection-presents-vivian-browne-my-kind-of-protest-press-release.pdf
Ornamental Blackness https://www.ornamentalblackness.com/
The Driskell Center https://driskellcenter.umd.edu/news/former-driskell-center-curator-adrienne-childs-phd-wins-2022-driskell-prize
High Museum https://high.org/driskell-prize/adrienne-l-childs/
The Clark https://www.clarkart.edu/fellow/detail/adrienne-childs-(1)
Courtauld https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/reconsidering-riffs-and-relations/
Columbia University https://abolitionism.universityseminars.columbia.edu/people/adrienne-l-childs
Culture Type https://www.culturetype.com/tag/adrienne-l-childs/
Enfilade https://enfilade18thc.com/2024/09/20/lecture-adrienne-childs-on-pearl-drops-and-blackamoors/
Montclair Art Museum https://www.montclairartmuseum.org/press/press-room/montclair-art-museum-presents-landmark-exhibition-century-100-years-black-art-mam
Portland Museum https://www.portlandmuseum.org/eventscalendar/2021-bernard-osher-lecture
Journal Panorama https://journalpanorama.org/article/riffs-and-relations/
AHNCA https://ahnca.org/event/the-colour-of-anxiety-race-sexuality-and-disorder-in-victorian-sculpture/
Current book is an exploration of Black figures in European decorative arts entitled Ornamental Blackness: The Black Figure in European Decorative Arts, published by Yale University Press.
Vivian Browne
Bini Apron 1973
Acrylic on canvas 49 3/4 x 51 3/4 in.
The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC
Gift of Adobe Krow Archives for Vivian Browne, Los Angeles.
Image courtesy of RYAN LEE Gallery, New York, 2024. © Vivian Browne
Vivian Browne
All Trace c. 1985
Oil on canvas 42 x 48 inches.
Courtesy of Adobe Krow Archives, Los Angeles, and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.
© Vivian Browne
Vivian Browne
Little Men #86 1967
Oil on paper 23 3/4 x 17 1/8 in.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Acquired through the generosity of Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis, 2020.
Image courtesy of RYAN LEE Gallery, New York. © Vivian Browne
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