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Dr. Robert Farris Thompson Lecture

Presented by Massachusetts College of Art and Design at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Tower Auditorium

March 31, 2010

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: The 2010 Adderley Lecture Series presents a talk by Dr. Robert Farris Thompson, on Wednesday, March 31 at 5 p.m., in the Tower Building Auditorium at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. A reception in the President’s Gallery will follow the lecture. Considered one of the world’s prominent authorities on African and Afro-Atlantic cultures, Robert Farris Thompson is best known for having changed what the public understands about the use and context of African art, showing that art is inseparable from its maker, its use, its function, and its perception. He has done so through the organization of exhibitions on African art at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. and through the penmanship of countless articles on the influence of African art on American sports, dance, and drama that have been anthologized in over 17 books. His list of publications includes the controversial best seller “Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy,” in which he locates the sources of contemporary Black Atlantic aesthetic practices in a diversity of cultures over the world. In 1995, he was honored with the Leadership Award of the Arts Council of the United States African Studies Association for his contributions to scholarship in African and African-American Arts. He is currently the longest serving master of a residential college at Yale, having served as Master of Timothy Dwight College since 1978.