Monday Muse
Monday Muse
Interview: Author and curator, Alayo Akinkugbe
Interview
Alayo Akinkugbe
Photography
Cameron Ugbodu
Interview
Alayo Akinkugbe
Photography
Cameron Ugbodu
Alayo Akinkugbe, in her own words, wears several hats – she is a writer, content creator, and VIP consultant for Frieze. The Cambridge and Courtauld graduate is the author of Reframing Blackness (published by #Merky Books in 2025) and the founder of A Black History of Art, a platform highlighting Black artists, sitters, curators and thinkers from art history and the present day. She is also the host of the A Shared Gaze podcast, interviewing artists such as Misan Harriman, Anya Paintsil, John Akomfrah and Ibrahim Mahama. The Wick caught up with Akinkugbe, who was travelling in Lagos (where Art X Lagos opens this week), to hear more about how her work has radically changed the way we see the history of art and what her hopes are for the future.
THE WICK: What does a typical Monday look like for you?
Alayo Akinkugbe: I wear several hats – author, journalist, podcaster, social media content creator and VIP consultant for Africa at Frieze. I’m also launching an art-adjacent business venture, which will be announced next year. If I’m in London, I’ll try and start the week strong with a reformer class. Most Mondays involve me sitting at my laptop, working on whichever aspect needs my attention most urgently. It ranges from writing an article or catalogue essay and working on content collaborations to dealing with Frieze-related queries and preparing public speaking engagements for my recently released book, Reframing Blackness. No two Mondays are the same, and I like the excitement of working across several projects simultaneously.
TW: You studied Art History at Cambridge and Curating at the Courtauld. How did those experiences sharpen your understanding of what was missing in the canon and shape the way you now approach visibility and voice?
AA: At Cambridge, I didn’t learn about a single Black artist in my first year, which was designed to give us a foundational understanding of art history. Once I realised this, looking back in my second year, the gap was blindingly obvious. It showed me how dangerously normalised it is within Western institutions, galleries and the broader art world to overlook the presence and contributions of Black artists, Black figures in artworks and Black art historians to the field. Now my career is entirely dedicated to platforming these narratives and presences, both historically and in the contemporary art landscape.
TW: Your Instagram A Black History of Art gives a platform to overlooked Black artists, sitters, curators, and thinkers, reframing the canon and making art history more inclusive. What first inspired you to start the platform, and how has it evolved since its creation?
AA: I started it to fill the gap in my education. It was a cathartic experiment, allowing me to write about art in a liberated, more casual way by comparison to the bi-weekly essays I was writing at Cambridge at the time. I hoped to learn about the various ways that Black artists were making work across the globe, and showcase the variation so that “Black art”, much like “White art”, could be understood as an absurd and impossible concept to define. The page still maintains this purpose, but the large audience adds a pressure that wasn’t there when I first started it. It has evolved over time, and it’s much more collaborative than when I started. The most engaging posts are the filmed collaborations with museums and galleries, where I walk-through and present work from within exhibitions.
TW: Your book Reframing Blackness explores the presentation of Black figures in Western art, as well as Blackness in museums, in feminist art movements, and in the curriculum. What conversations do you hope this book will spark within the art world?
AA: I hope that the book encourages schools and universities to rethink the content and format of their art and art history curricula. For the art world, I hope it holds up a mirror and allows everyone to see the exploitative nature of treating the work of Black artists as a “trend”, as it was in 2020 and its immediate aftermath.
“It showed me how dangerously normalised it is within western institutions, galleries and the broader art world to overlook the presence and contributions of Black artists, Black figures in artworks and Black art historians to the field.”
TW: You also host the podcast A Shared Gaze, which has conversations with Black contemporary artists from across the globe. Who would you like to interview most in 2026?
AA: Probably an icon like Dame Magdalene Odundo. Or the wonderful Nigerian Modernist artist, Dr Bruce Onobrakpeya, whom I’ve visited several times in Lagos but never interviewed formally.
TW: You’ve said your work aims to challenge how art history is taught in the West. What’s one system or habit you think needs to be dismantled first, and what could take its place?
AA: It’s important to frame survey courses – if they have to exist – as exclusionary from the beginning, so no student believes they’re being taught the basis of art history, even Western art history, and it includes no Black artists.
TW: Your favourite Culturally Curious spot in London?
AA: I love the Barbican for everything: the cinema, the conservatory, the gallery, the theatre, the architecture. It’s one of my dream places to live.
TW: What’s the best piece of advice you have received, and you would pass onto a loved one?
AA: Forwards ever, backwards never. Take both your successes and failures in your stride, don’t dwell too long on either. These are paraphrased from my grandparents, and they encourage me to keep going in all circumstances, good and bad.
TW: Who is your ultimate Monday Muse?
AA: The first person that comes to mind is the great Koyo Kouoh, who was a guiding light for so many Black women of my generation working in this field.
