Scholar • Artist • Organizer • Critic
Luke Williams is a scholar, artist, organizer, and critic of twentieth and twenty-first century Black performance and visual cultures. His work, which spans embodiment, portraiture, racial capitalism, Afrofuturism, and the aesthetics of the Black radical imagination, focuses on Black Diasporic art in the Americas and broader Atlantic world. Luke is a PhD candidate in Modern Thought & Literature at Stanford University. His dissertation, In the Black: Figures of Racial Capitalism examines the practices of four Black emerging artists in the California Bay Area as they navigate the pressures of racial capitalism in the art market. Currently, he is the Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of the African Diaspora and a Diversifying Academia, Recruiting Excellence (DARE) fellow at Stanford University.
Current Work
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In the Black: Figures of Racial Capitalism
This dissertation examines how emerging Black artists respond aesthetically to the pressures of racial capitalism in the art market.
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Book Project: Blood, Sweat, and Time
This edited volume supports a collection of emerging Black scholars, artists, and writers from the Bay Area making their perspectives known.
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Memories Cast in Metal
Essay on Salimatu Amabebe: SON at the Museum of the African Diaspora
Events
Upcoming:
6/15 Stanford University Graduation Ceremony
Current:
Order Now: Blood, Sweat, and Time https://www.smingsming.com/collections/frontpage/products/blood-sweat-and-time
Curatorial Fellowship, Museum of the African Diaspora - Mary Graham “Value Test: Brown Paper”
Out Now: Attempting Escape: Plotting Asymptotes in Michael Richards's Tar and Feather liquid blackness (2023) 7 (2): 88–99.
https://doi.org/10.1215/26923874-10658336
Laura Bassi Scholarship Awardee
Quoted in Frieze Magazine “The Politics of Black Figurative Art Today,” John-Baptiste Odour
Past:
3/9 Guest Lecture in “Art and the Market” with Andrei Pesic at Stanford University
2/15 CAA Conference Presentation: “Stuart V. Robertson’s Protective Portraits: Speculating on a Contested Black Future,”
2/8 In conversation with Delita Martin and Tawny Chatmon, Museum of the African Diaspora
Curatorial Fellowship, Museum of the African Diaspora - Salimatu Amabebe, SON
1/9 - 6/15 Teaching - Cultures and Ideas I & II (Santa Clara University)
Adrian Burrell: Sugarcane and Lightning (San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art)
Mildred Howard: The Time and Space of Now (San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art)
Featured in
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Student Spotlight
UVA Women’s Center: Men’s Leadership Project
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UVA Today: Research Profile
Class of 2018 Student Profile on Innovative Thesis Research
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UVA Today: Jefferson Scholarships
Fourth-Year Jefferson Scholar Addressed 116 Finalists and nearly 100 alumni, friends, and faculty of the University during Jefferson Scholars Selection Weekend
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Stanford VPGE Awardees
Graduate Student Leaders Recognized with Ethnic and Community Center Achievement Awards
