BOOK LAUNCH

Thursday, May 1 - 6:30PM

African Venice: A Guide to Art, Culture and People

Paul Kaplan and Shaul Bassi, Foreword by Igiaba Scego, and Afterword by Maaza Mengiste

Presentation by Paul Kaplan

Followed by a reception.

Blackburn Study Center & Gallery

323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor

African Venice is the first guidebook to the extensive historical and contemporary African presence in the city of the lagoons. A set of ten walking tours highlights images of Black people in Venetian art from the Middle Ages to the present, the afterlife of Shakespeare’s Othello, the painful local legacies of slavery and Italian colonialism, and the remarkable visibility of African and Afro-descendant artists at the Venice Biennale. These tours are enriched by more than twenty essays, poems, and reflections that celebrate, question, and reimagine Venice’s Black past and present. From premodern paintings and sculpture to contemporary artworks,African Venicewill show you the city as you have never seen it.

For more information about African Venice, please visit Penn State University Press.