Northwestern University Art History Scholar Wins Book Award

Krista A. Thompson, the holder of the Weinberg College Board of Advisers Chair in the department of art history at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, has been selected to receive the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award from the College Art Association. The award, established in 1953, is named after one of the founding members of the association. It honors distinguished works on the history of art written in the English language. Professor Thompson will be honored at the College Art Association’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. on February 3.

Professor Thompson is being honored for her book Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice (Duke University Press, 2015). The book examines photographic practices in the African diaspora communities of the Caribbean and the United States.

Professor Thompson has been on the faculty at Northwestern University since 2005. Earlier, she taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago. An earlier book was An Eye for the Tropics: Photography, Tourism, and Framing the Caribbean Picturesque (Duke University Press, 2007).

Dr. Thompson is a graduate of McGill University in Montreal. She holds a master’s degree in art history and a Ph.D. in culture, history, and theory from Emory University in Atlanta.