Drew Thompson is a historian of art and an independent curator. His research areas include African and African-American visual and material culture, Black internationalist movements, modern and contemporary Black art, and histories of photography. Recent exhibitions include Sightlines on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery and Benjamin Wigfall & Communications Village at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. He is the author of the monograph Filtering Histories: The Photographic Bureaucracy in Mozambique, 1960 to Recent Times (University of Michigan Press, 2021), and he is currently working on a book titled Coloring Surveillance through Polaroids: The Poetics of Black Solidarity and Sociality. His art criticism and writings on contemporary art and the history of photography have appeared in Africa Is A Country, FOAM Magazine, the White Review, and Source Magazine and in edited volumes published by Art Institute of Chicago, The Image Centre, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Walther Collection, David Zwirner Books, and HANGAR–Centro do Investigação Artística. With the aim of enhancing public access and engagement with the visual arts and humanities, he has served in an advisory capacity for several non-profit organizations, including the Estate of Benjamin Wigfall, Watson Foundation, SSRC–Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Program, Brooklyn Museum, and CONTACT Photography Festival.
*On leave 2025–2026*
*On leave 2025–2026*
Selected Recent Publications
Exhibition Catalogues:
SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2025.
Co-edited with Sarah Eckhardt. Benjamin Wigfall & Communities Village. Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2023.
Essays in Art Catalogues:
“Reimaginations of Portraiture and Figuration through the Diaspora,” In Njideka Akunyili Crosby (New York: David Zwirner, 2025), 114-125.
“From Color to Blackness: The Subtleties of Liberation and the Search for Diaspora,” In Meleko Mokgosi: Spaces of Subjection (New Haven: GHP, 2024), 48-62.
“Surveillance,” In Art Institute of Chicago Field Guide to Photography and Media edited by Antawan I. Byrd and Elizabeth Siegel with Carl Fuldner (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2023), 382-85.
“Imaging history anew: Ângela Ferreira and the Art of Decolonization” and “Photography from the shadows,” In Atlantica: Contemporary Art from Mozambique and its Diaspora edited by Ângela Ferreira in coordination with Mónica de Miranda (Lisbon: Hangar Books, 2020), 65-69 and 213-21.
Peer-reviewed Publications:
“Telling on Archival Erasure: The Stories Behind Griffith Davis’s Liberia Photographs,” In Facing Black Star edited by Thierry Gervais and Vincent Lavoie (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2023), 213-36.
“Photo Genres and Alternate Histories of Independence in Mozambique,” In Ambivalent. Photography and Visibility in African History edited by Patricia Hayes and Gary Minkley (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2019), 126-55.
SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2025.
Co-edited with Sarah Eckhardt. Benjamin Wigfall & Communities Village. Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2023.
Essays in Art Catalogues:
“Reimaginations of Portraiture and Figuration through the Diaspora,” In Njideka Akunyili Crosby (New York: David Zwirner, 2025), 114-125.
“From Color to Blackness: The Subtleties of Liberation and the Search for Diaspora,” In Meleko Mokgosi: Spaces of Subjection (New Haven: GHP, 2024), 48-62.
“Surveillance,” In Art Institute of Chicago Field Guide to Photography and Media edited by Antawan I. Byrd and Elizabeth Siegel with Carl Fuldner (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2023), 382-85.
“Imaging history anew: Ângela Ferreira and the Art of Decolonization” and “Photography from the shadows,” In Atlantica: Contemporary Art from Mozambique and its Diaspora edited by Ângela Ferreira in coordination with Mónica de Miranda (Lisbon: Hangar Books, 2020), 65-69 and 213-21.
Peer-reviewed Publications:
“Telling on Archival Erasure: The Stories Behind Griffith Davis’s Liberia Photographs,” In Facing Black Star edited by Thierry Gervais and Vincent Lavoie (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2023), 213-36.
“Photo Genres and Alternate Histories of Independence in Mozambique,” In Ambivalent. Photography and Visibility in African History edited by Patricia Hayes and Gary Minkley (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2019), 126-55.
