Perceptual Drift: Black Art and an Ethics of Looking

A powerful reframing of the study of Black art and the historical and contemporary status of Black lives

Perceptual Drift offers a new interpretive model drawing on four key works of Black art in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s collection. In its chapters, leading Black scholars from multiple disciplines deploy materialist approaches to challenge the limits of canonic art history, rooted as it is in social and racial inequities. The opening essay by Key Jo Lee introduces the concept of “percep...