Justin Brown Portrait

Justin M. Brown is an art historian based in Boston, Massachusetts.

About

I am an assistant professor of art history and African & African diaspora studies at Boston College. Currently working on a book titled The Cosmic Calabash.

Research Interests

Afro-Caribbean ritual arts.
Funerary arts in Africa and the diaspora.
Black American artists of the 19th century.

Publications

“Afro-Surinamese Flag Shrines: Materializing Group Identity in the Eighteenth Century.” In The Routledge Companion to Race in Early Modern Artistic, Material, and Visual Production, edited by Nicholas R. Jones, Christina H. Lee, and Dominique Polanco. New York: Routledge, 2024 (forthcoming)

“Slavery at Home and Overseas: Lessons from New England and the Netherlands.” In Art Museums and the Legacies of the Dutch Slave Trade: Curating Histories, Envisioning Futures, edited by Joanna Sheers Seidenstein and Sarah Mallory. Boston: Brill, 2024 (forthcoming)

“Suriname Maroon Art.” In Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance, edited by Victoria Avery. Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, 2023

“Marking Transatlantic Time: Accounting for Slavery in Britain and the Caribbean.” In Marking Time: Objects, People, and Their Lives, 1500–1800, edited by Edward Town and Angela McShane. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020

Teaching

Intro to African Arts and Visual Culture

Intro to Caribbean Art

Maroons: African Nations in the Americas

Exhibitions

Spirit and Strength: Modern Art from Haiti, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., September 29, 2024 – March 9, 2025

Highest Heaven: Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Art from the Collection of Roberta and Richard Huber, Worcester Art Museum, March 11 – July 19, 2017

Picket Fence to Picket Line: Visions of American Citizenship, Worcester Art Museum, October 15, 2016 – February 5, 2017

Email me at justin.m.brown [at] bc.edu

Contact