Professor Eddie Chambers joined the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin in 2010, teaching African Diaspora art history. He is the holder of the David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professorship in Art History. He received his doctorate in 1998 from Goldsmiths College, University of London, awarded for his thesis ‘Black Visual Arts Activity in England Between 1981–1986: Press and Public Responses’.
He was first an artist, having graduated from art school (Sunderland Polytechnic) in 1983 with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art. His work is included in several collections including Tate Britain, Sheffield Museums, and the Arts Council Collection, London. He spent a considerable number of years as an independent curator, working with many artists including Denzil Forrester, Eugene Palmer, Tam Joseph, Frank Bowling, Permindar Kaur, and Lesley Sanderson. In addition to his exhibition work, he has written extensively about the work of modern and contemporary artists in the United Kingdom and other parts of the world. His articles, essays and peer review texts have been published in a range of magazines and journals, and he has been, for over three decades a contributor to Art Monthly (London). In June 2018 he was appointed an Art Monthly Foundation Honorary Patron, (other patrons being Liam Gillick, Hans Haacke, Mona Hatoum, Alfredo Jaar, and Martha Rosler).
Eddie Chambers has guest-edited a number of magazines and journals, including Critical Interventions, the International Review of African American Art, and several issues of Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art. The most recent issue of Nka he guest-edited was #50, published in May 2022, dedicated to subjects related to African American Artists in the International Arena.
A collection of his articles and essays, titled Run Through the Jungle was published by the Institute of International Visual Arts (London) as part of its ‘Annotations’ series in 1999. His book Things Done Change: The Cultural Politics of Recent Black Artists in Britain was published by Rodopi Editions, Amsterdam and New York, 2012, as part of its Cross/Cultures —Readings in the Post/Colonial Literatures in English series. He was the author of Black Artists in British Art: A History Since the 1950s, published in 2014 by I. B. Tauris/Bloomsbury, London and New York. In 2016, I. B. Tauris/Bloomsbury published his book Roots & Culture: Cultural Politics in the Making of Black Britain, a study of Black Britons’ cultural identity formations. His latest book is World is Africa: Writings on Diaspora Art, published by Bloomsbury, 2021.
He recently edited the Routledge Companion to African American Art History published in 2019. He is now editing the forthcoming Routledge Companion to African Diaspora Art History.
He served a three-year term as Editor-in-Chief of CAA's Art Journal from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2024.
Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art #50 — From the Editor PDF
Remembering the Crack of the Whip PDF
Journal of American Studies review of Things Done Change PDF