Day 1 of "American Art in Dialogue with Africa and its Diaspora" session on primitivism and modernism. This two-day symposium examines the role of Africa and its diaspora in the development of art of the United States, from nineteenth-century portraiture to American modernism; from the Harlem Renaissance to the contemporary art world.

Chair: Tanya Sheehan, Associate Professor of Art, Colby College

James Smalls, Professor of Art History and Theory, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
"Féral Benga: African Muse of Modernism"

Mia Bagneris, Assistant Professor of Art History, Newcomb Art Department, Tulane University
"Fighting the Fetish for Fétiches: Africa in the Work of Palmer Hayden"

Nicholas Miller, PhD Candidate in Art History, Northwestern University
"'To Paint His Own People': William H. Johnson's Avant-Garde Gambits and the Orientalized Black Female Body"