Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie (Ph.D. Northwestern University, 2000) is Professor of Art History and Visual Culture of Global Africa at the University of California Santa Barbara. He is the author of Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist (University of Rochester Press, 2008: winner of the 2009 Herskovits Prize of the African Studies Association for best scholarly publication in African studies), Making History: The Femi Akinsanya African Art Collection (Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2011), and editor of Artists of Nigeria (Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2012). Ogbechie is also the founder and editor of Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture. He organized and coordinated the First International Nollywood Convention and Symposium (Los Angeles, June 2005) and subsequently founded in 2006 the Nollywood Foundation, which produced annual African film conventions in Los Angeles. Ogbechie has received prestigious fellowships, grants and awards for his research from the American Academy in Berlin, Getty Research Institute, Rockefeller Foundation, Institute for International Education, Smithsonian Institution and the Ford Foundation. His current research focuses on the role of cultural informatics and new media in analysis of the art and cultural patrimony of Africa and its Diaspora in the age of globalization.

Refreshments will be available before the talk.