Chika Okeke Agulu Biography, Age, Career, Family, Networth.

Chika Okeke Agulu Biography

Chika Okeke-Agulu was born in Umuahia in Nigeria in 1966. He studied at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (BA, First Class Honors, Sculpture and Art History, 1990; MFA, Painting, 1994), University of South Florida (MA, Art History, 1999), and Emory University (Ph.D., Art History, 2004).

Okeke-Agulu taught at the Yaba College of Technology in Lagos, the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Penn State University, and was the Clark Visiting professor at Williams College. He is the Director of the Program in African Studies, Director of Africa World Initiative, and Robert Schirmer Professor of Art & Archaeology and African American Studies at Princeton University. In the spring 2020, he was appointed the Kirk Varnedoe Visiting professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. In 2022 he was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art, Oxford University (2022-2023), and is a Fellow of The British Academy.

He was a writer and columnist for The Huffington Post, and blogs at Ọfọdunka. He has served on the Board of Directors of the College Arts Association. He is currently on the board of Princeton in Africa, the Transnational Board of Tate-Hyundai Research Centre, Tate Modern, and the advisory board of the Africa Institute, Sharjah. He is a member of the Contemporary Art Committee, Philadelphia Museum of Art.^{[citation needed]}

He received the College Art Association 2016 Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism. He is the recipient, from the African Studies Association, of the 2016 Melville J. Herskovits Award for the most important scholarly work in African Studies published in English in 2015, and Honorable Mention, The Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award, from the Art Council of African Studies Association (2017).

Curator

Curated Uche Okeke 60th Birthday Anniversary Retrospective at the Goethe-Institut, Lagos. In 1995, he organized the Nigerian section of the First Johannesburg Biennale. He co-organized Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, and Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, Sweden. In 2001, he co-curated The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994, at the Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, Haus der Kulturen der Welt/Martin Gropiusbau, Berlin, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and PS1/MOMA, New York. He claims to have served as an Academic Consultant and Coordinator of Platform 4, for Documenta11, Kassel in 2002. In 2004 he co-organized the 5th Gwangju Biennial and Strange Planet at the Georgia State University Art Gallery. He co-organized Life Objects: Rites of Passage in African Art for the Princeton University Art Museum in 2009, and (with Udo Kittelmann and Britta Schmitz), Who Knows Tomorrow, at the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, (June-Sept., 2010). In 2019, he co-organized (with Okwui Enwezor), El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale at Haus der Kunst, Munich, MATHAF: Arab Museum of Modern Art, and Kunstmuseum, Bern.

Publications

Okeke-Agulu has published articles and reviews in Parkett, African Arts, Glendora Review, Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, South Atlantic Quarterly, Artforum International, and Art South Africa. He has contributed to edited volumes, including Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Market Place (InIVA, 1999); The Nsukka Artists and Nigerian Contemporary Art (Smithsonian, 2002); The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movement in Africa, 1945–1994 (Prestel, 2001); Art Criticism and Africa (Saffron Books, 1998); and Is Art History Global? (Routledge, 2007). His books include El Anatsui: The Reinvention of Sculpture (Damiani, 2022), and Yusuf Grillo: Painting. Lagos. Life (Skira, 2020), Obiora Udechukwu: Line, Image, Text (Skira, 2016), Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria (Duke UP, 2015), Contemporary African Art Since 1980 (Damiani, 2009), Who Knows Tomorrow (Konig, 2010), Phyllis Galembo: Maske (Chris Boot, 2010), and Ezumeezu: Essays on Nigerian Art and Architecture, a Festschrift in Honour of Demas Nwoko (Goldline & Jacobs, 2012). He is the editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, published by Duke University Press.

Chika Okeke Agulu Profile as a Proffesor

Ph.D., Emory University, 2004; M.F.A (painting), University of Nigeria, 1994

An artist, critic, and art historian, Okeke-Agulu specializes in indigenous, modern, and contemporary African and African Diaspora art history and theory. Born in Umuahia, Nigeria, Okeke-Agulu earned an MFA (Painting) from the University of Nigeria, and a Ph.D. (Art History) from Emory University. He previously taught at The Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Here at Princeton, he is the Director of the Program in African Studies, Director of the African World Initiative.

Professor Okeke-Agulu was appointed the Robert Sterling Clark Visiting Professor of Art History at Williams College (2007), Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (2020); and Slade Professor of Fine Art, University of Oxford (2023). He was a Fellow at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute (2008), and a Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellow (2010). He was elected Fellow of The British Academy in 2022.

His books include El Anatsui. The Reinvention of Sculpture (Damiani, 2022); African Artists: From 1882 to Now (Phaidon, 2021); Yusuf Grillo: Painting. Lagos. Life (Skira, 2020); Obiora Udechukwu: Line, Image, Text (Skira, 2016); Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria (Duke UP, 2015); and Contemporary African Art Since 1980 (Damiani, 2010). In 2006, he edited the first-ever issue of African Arts Dedicated to African Modernism, and his writings have appeared in African Arts, Meridians: Feminism, Race, Internationalism, Artforum International,  Packett, South Atlantic Quarterly, and October, as well as in The New York Times, The Guardian (Lagos), and Huffington Post. He is co-editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art and writes the blog Ọfọdunka.

As a curator, Okeke-Agulu co-organized Samuel Fosso: Affirmative Acts, Princeton University Art Museum, 2022; and (with Okwui Enwezor) the traveling survey El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2019). His many other art exhibitions, including Who Knows Tomorrow, Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2010); Fifth Gwangju Biennale (2004); The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (2001); Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1995) and the Nigerian section, First Johannesburg Biennale (1995). He is on the curatorial team of the Sharjah Biennial (2023).

Okeke-Agulu serves on the advisory boards of the Hyundai Tate Research Centre, Tate Modern, London, The Africa Institute, Sharjah, Bët-bi/Le Korsa Museum Project, Senegal, and Edo Museum of West African Art, Benin City, Nigeria. He is also on the advisory council of Mpala Research Center, Nanyuki, Kenya; serves on the executive board of Princeton in Africa, and on the editorial board of the Journal of Visual Culture. Previously, served on the board of directors of the College Art Association, and the advisory board of the Center for the Study of Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

His many awards include Honorable Mention, Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award, Arts Council of African Studies Association (2017); The Melville J. Herskovits Prize for the most important scholarly work in African Studies published in English during the preceding year (African Studies Association, 2016); and Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism (College Art Association, 2016).

Exhibitions

As an artist, Okeke-Agulu has had three solo exhibitions, five joint exhibitions, and twenty-eight group exhibitions in England, Germany, Nigeria, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States. He participated in the First Johannesburg Biennale (1995). His work is in the collections of the Newark Museum, Iwalewa-Haus, University of Bayreuth, and the National Council for Arts and Culture, Lagos.

In 2020, Okeke-Agulu called on auction house Christie’s to cancel its planned Paris sale of two Igbo sculptures, which were stolen during the Nigeria-Biafra War (1967-1970). The auction went ahead.

Chika Okeke Agulu Social Media

Chika Okeke Ugulu on Instagram

Chika Okeke Ugulu on Twitter

Networth

He is estimated to be worth around $1m

External References