Lijin Lecture / Joan Kee: Afro Asia, or Art for a Global Majority @ BAMPFA

BAMPFA is excited to present Joan Kee as the museum's 2026 Lijin Lecturer. The endowed Lijin Collection Distinguished Lecture series presents leading artists and scholars on topics that relate to and cast new light upon East Asian art.

Dr. Kee's lecture draws from her award-winning book The Geometries of Afro Asia, an analysis of art, politics and geography across Africa, Asia and North America that offers a groundbreaking method for writing art history using the language of geometry. Kee's innovative vision helps us to understand the rich and surprising relationships that formed between Black and Asian artists at critical historical junctures—from civil rights struggles in the US and the development of South Korea amid US military occupation in the 1960s and '70s, to debates over multiculturalism and critiques of globalization in the 1990s and 2010s.

Joan Kee is the Judy and Michael Steinhardt Director and Professor at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts and Affiliated Faculty at NYU School of Law. She focuses on how modern and contemporary artworks intersect with diverse phenomena, from legal jurisdiction to theories of digital communication. Kee’s books include Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method (2013), which brought international attention to postwar Korean abstraction; Models of Integrity: Art and Law in Post-Sixties America (2019); and The Geometries of Afro Asia: Art Beyond Solidarity (2023), which won the 2024 Robert Motherwell Book Award.