What does it feel like to be part of a critical mass, finally? It feels like a swelling in your limbs and mind, pride swelling up in your heart, and your people swelling, swirling with you-there is someone at your back, on lookout, and your posse is circling round ready for whatever. This was the feeling last month in Paris as a critical mass of artists, scholars, curators, writers, thinkers, and doers gathered for Black Portraiture[s]: The Black Body in the West, the fifth in a series of conferences organized by New York University and Harvard University. In three non-stop days of presentations, international attendees traversed Paris's Left Bank to conference sites at École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, University Paris Diderot-Paris 7, and the musée du quai Branly. A fourth day at the museum featured film screenings. By all accounts, Black Portraiture[s] was a conference for the history books (...)

[Read Michelle Joan Wilkinson's full Report published on Art.Recognition.Culture (ARC)]