Studies in 20th & 21st-Century Art (460-0-1)

Topic

Black Art in Minor Keys

Instructors

Krista Thompson

Meeting Info

Kresge 4354 Art Hist. Sem. Rm.: Wed 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

In 2025, the pathbreaking Cameroonian-Swiss curator Koyo Kouoh passed away as she was set to coordinate one of the world's most acclaimed contemporary art exhibitions, the Venice Biennale. Before her death, she organized a team of curators to carry out her vision for the Biennale (which opens in May and runs through November 2026). This seminar uses Kouoh's central conceptual framework, "In Minor Keys," as a provocation to reorient the study of contemporary art. Minor keys is approached as a set of overlapping frameworks—sonic, spatial, and social—through which artists produce meaning within conditions of historical violence, ecological crisis, and epistemic erasure. As a sonic and affective register, the minor key foregrounds tone, rhythm, and feeling. Drawing on Black expressive traditions, students will explore how artists mobilize mood, quiet, resonance, poetic persistence, the fugitive, and the withdrawn to generate affective worlds beyond dominant visual frameworks. As a spatial and ecological model, the seminar draws on Édouard Glissant to examine archipelagic thinking and the "creole garden" as figures for dense, interdependent worlds—artistic "oases" that sustain life within larger systems of power. The minor key, as a relational and social practice, highlights collectivity and "polyphonous assembly," positioning art as a site for gathering, listening, and worldmaking. Finally, the seminar examines new models of curation inspired by the Biennale. We consider the poetics and politics of curating and art-making after loss, taking the posthumous realization of Kouoh's exhibition as a case study in collective authorship, mourning, and continuation.

Class Materials (Required)

Kouoh, Koyo. In Minor Keys. 61st Venice Biennale, 2026 (forthcoming).

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: REASON: Pre-registration is not allowed for this class. Please try again during regular registration.
Add Consent: Instructor Consent Required