Dr. Kellie Jones
Dr. Kellie Jones is the inaugural recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize. She is currently Assistant Professor in the Departments of History of Art and African American Studies at Yale University.
Her research interests include African American and African Diaspora artists, Latino/a and Latin American Artists, and issues in contemporary art and museum theory. Additionally, she has been a Scholar-in-Residence, at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy (2005). She is co-curator of the exhibition “Basquiat” which toured New York, Los Angeles, and Houston in 2005-2006. Jones received her Doctorate of Philosophy in art history (1999) from Yale University.
She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree, Magna Cum Laude, from Amherst College in 1981. Prior to her current position at Yale University, Jones had taught at Wellesley College (Mass.), Amherst College (Mass.), and Trinity College (Conn.). In addition to teaching, Jones has held curatorial positions at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minn., the Jamaica Arts Center in Jamaica, N.Y., the Broida Museum, New York, and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York.
On EyeMinded:
“This extraordinary collection reveals Kellie Jones as a discerning architect of the multicultural art landscape of the last few decades. Informed by her keen eye and incisive intellect, Jones’s definitive takes on artists, including Lorna Simpson, Martin Puryear, and David Hammons, make this book a must-read for anyone interested in American art from the 1980s forward. And then, on top of Jones’s own shimmering intellectual accomplishment in these pages, EyeMinded is something else as well: a conversation between an American family of arts and letters as illustrious as the Lowells or the Jameses. This book will stand apart for that reason alone, for few American families have contributed so richly to the arts, letters, and sounds of their generations as the Joneses. Here comes Dr. Kellie Jones, ‘eye-minded,’ and she’s bringing her people with her.”—Elizabeth Alexander, Yale University
Learn more about the David C. Driskell Prize and other previous winners.