Joshua I. Cohen (Ph.D. Columbia University, 2014) is an art historian specializing in 20th-century francophone West Africa, southern Africa, and connections to Europe and the United States. His areas of interest include African and "global" modernisms; discourses of “primitivism,” racial identity, and “renaissance” in art (history); national socialist cultural policies; West African ballet performance; postcolonial studies; and museum studies.

At CCNY he has designed and taught courses on African modernisms, African canonical sculpture and cosmopolitan modernisms, the Harlem Renaissance, (photo-)portraiture between Africa and the diaspora, postcolonialism in contemporary art, and curatorial issues surrounding the arts of Africa.

His first scholarly monograph, The "Black Art" Renaissance: African Sculpture and Modernism across Continents (University of California Press, 2020), received honorable mention for the Modernist Studies Association First Book Prize (for a book published in 2020).

His writing has additionally appeared in The Art Bulletin, African Arts, Journal of Black Studies, Journal of Southern African Studies, Burlington Magazine, Wasafiri, Africa Is a Country, and publications of MoMA and the Centre Pompidou (see here for an archive of articles and book chapters).

In fall 2020, with Foad Torshizi (RISD) and Vazira Zamindar (Brown University), he co-organized an international conference, Art History, Postcolonialism, and the Global Turn, and is collaborating on publishing contributions to the conference as a journal issue.

His current book project, tentatively titled Art of the Opaque: African Modernisms, Decolonization, and the Cold War, is a critical study of modernism between Africa and its diaspora in the context of decolonization and the global Cold War.

BOOKS

The “Black Art” Renaissance: African Sculpture and Modernism across Continents. Oakland: University of California Press, 2020.

The Expanded Subject: New Perspectives in Photographic Portraiture from Africa. New York; Munich: Wallach Art Gallery; Hirmer, 2016; with Sandrine Colard and Giulia Paoletti.

REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES

“African Socialist Cultural Policy: Senegal under Senghor.” African Arts 54, no. 3 (Autumn 2021): 28-37.

"Harlem and Abroad: Notes to an International ‘Renaissance.’” Wasafiri 34 no. 3, issue 99 (September 2019): 37-48.

“Locating Senghor’s École de Dakar: International and Transnational Dimensions to Senegalese Modern Art, c 1959-1980.” African Arts 51, no. 3 (Autumn 2018): 10-25.

 “Fauve Masks: Rethinking Modern 'Primitivist' Uses of African and Oceanic Art, 1905-8.” The Art Bulletin 99, no. 2 (June 2017): 136-65.

 “Stages in Transition: Les Ballets Africains and Independence, 1959 to 1960.” Journal of Black Studies 43, no. 1 (January 2012): 11-48.

BOOK CHAPTERS AND CATALOGUE ESSAYS

“Picasso, la Guerra Fría y la descolonización en África.” Trans. María Luisa Balseiro. In Picasso e historia, ed. José Lebrero Stals and Pepe Karmel, 227-37. Málaga: Museo Picasso Málaga.

 “Derain et l’« art primitif » ,” trans. Jean-François Cornu, in André Derain, 1904-1914. La décennie radicale, ed. Cécile Debray, 129-133. Paris: Éditions du Centre Pompidou, 2017.

 “Un équiblibre décisif entre l’« éternel » et le moderne,” trans. Jean-François Cornu, in André Derain, 1904-1914. La décennie radicale, ed. Cécile Debray, 91-92. Paris: Éditions du Centre Pompidou, 2017.

“Introduction: Portraiture beyond (Self-)Representation.” In The Expanded Subject: New Perspectives in Photographic Portraiture from Africa, 15-31; with Sandrine Colard and Giulia Paoletti. New York; Munich: Wallach Art Gallery, Hirmer Verlag, 2016.

“Interrogating the Portrait in Mohamed Camara’s Photography,” in The Expanded Subject: New Perspectives in Photographic Portraiture from Africa, 59-79. New York; Munich: Wallach Art Gallery, Hirmer Verlag, 2016.

“The Play: Reassembling African Arts in the West,” in Curatorial Dreams: Critics Imagine Exhibitions, ed. Shelley Butler and Erica Lehrer, 127-140. Montreal; Kingston, Ont.: McGill-Queens University Press, 2016.

ONLINE PUBLICATIONS

"The Politics of Influence." Africa Is a Country, 2020.

“Identity and Abstraction: Ernest Mancoba in London and Paris, 1938-1940.” Post: Notes on Modern & Contemporary Art Around the Globe. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2018.

“Interroger le portrait dans la photographie de Mohamed Camara.” Trans. Clara Pacquet. In Photographie et oralité. Dialogues à Bamako, Dakar et ailleurs, ed. Bärbel Küster and Clara Pacquet, 2017.

“Deux masques ivoiriens et La Guitare (1912) de Picasso.” In Actes du colloque: Picasso. Sculptures. Paris: Musée Picasso, 2017.

“Souleymane Keita: Traversées.” In Actes du colloque: Avant que la ‘magie’ n’opère : Modernités artistiques en Afrique, ed. Maureen Murphy and Nora Gréani. Paris: Institut National de l’Histoire de l’Art; Histoire Culturelle et Sociale de l’Art (HiCSA), Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2017.

BOOK AND EXHIBITION REVIEWS

"Modern African art and apartheid" [review of Daniel Magaziner, The Art of Life in South Africa, 2016]. Journal of Southern African Studies 46, no. 1 (2020): 189-91.

“Picasso and primitive art. Paris, Kansas City and Montreal.” The Burlington Magazine CLIX, no. 1376 (November 2017): 944-45.

“Book Review: Daniel J. Sherman, French Primitivism and the Ends of Empire, 1945-1975 (University of Chicago Press, 2011),” African Arts 46, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 93-94; with Ginger Nolan.

“Exhibition Review: VIIes Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie,” African Arts 42, no. 2 (Summer 2009): 88-89.

“Exhibition Review: A Cameroon World: Art and Artifacts from the Marshall and Caroline Mount Collection,” African Arts 42, no. 1 (Spring 2009): 102-103.