Art History Happy Hour: Seydou Keïta
Brooklyn Museum hosts an informal evening exploring the portrait photography of Seydou Keita and his lasting influence on African visual culture.
Why we picked this
Keita ran a portrait studio in 1950s Bamako and produced some of the most formally sophisticated photographs of the twentieth century — this happy hour format makes the art history approachable without dumbing it down.
Brooklyn Museum’s Art History Happy Hour series takes a single artist and builds a casual, drink-in-hand evening around their work. This edition focuses on Seydou Keita, the Malian photographer whose portrait studio in Bamako produced thousands of images between the 1940s and 1960s that are now recognized as masterworks of twentieth-century photography.
Keita’s subjects chose their own poses, clothing, and props, collaborating with the photographer to construct images of dignity and self-presentation at a moment of enormous social change in West Africa. The talk situates his work within both the history of studio photography and the broader story of African visual culture, exploring why his images continue to resonate decades after they were made.
Tickets required. Brooklyn Museum.