Rowland Abiodun

Rowland Abiodun is John C. Newton Professor of Art, the History of Art, and Black Studies at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts. He is the author of Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art (2014), What Follows Six Is More than Seven: Understanding African Art (1995); co-author of Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought (1989), Yoruba Art and Aesthetics (1991), and Cloth Only Wears to Shreds: Yoruba Textiles and Photographs from the Beier Collection (2004); and co-editor of Ifá Divination: Knowledge, Power and Performance (2016) and The Yoruba Artist: New Theoretical Perspectives on African Arts (1994). Abiodun is Advisory Board member, the National Museum of African Art; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; and was a consultant for, and participant in, the Smithsonian World Film, Kindred Spirits: Contemporary Nigerian Art. Abiodun has served on the Board of Directors of the African Studies Association and as the President of the Arts Council of the African Studies Association. In 2011, he received the Leadership Award of the Arts Council of the African Studies Association in recognition of his excellence, innovative contributions, and vision in the fields of African and Diasporic Arts.