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Specialization:
Decolonization; Colonization; Afro-American Visual Culture; Latin American Racialization; Racial Identity Formation; Critical Theory; Museum Studies; Cultural Heritage
Education:
Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles
M.L.A. University of Pennsylvania
B.A. The Pennsylvania State University
Bio:
Brisa Smith Flores explores how visual culture impacts socio-racial identity formation and transnational solidarity movements across the African diaspora. She is interested in the ways that art and art spaces are active agents in the construction of political thought, societal norms, and individual perceptions of the self and others.
Smith Flores is currently working on her book manuscript entitled, “Rethinking Museums: Museology Between Colonial Pasts and Decolonial Futures.” This manuscript emerges from a current unyielding crisis as calls for increased representation, repatriation, and in the most extreme cases complete extermination of cultural institutions are becoming more prevalent. The book examines the responsibility of museological institutions to engage earnestly with decolonial processes and how to maintain accountability when their earnest efforts are insufficient. The purpose is not to avoid the conversations of decolonization, instead this research works to provide a vocabulary to hold more nuanced conversations regarding the current state of museums and the possibilities of future “decolonized” museology.
Smith Flores was a UC Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Irvine. She has also earned the Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship of American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. She has worked at notable institutions like the Dallas Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Getty Research Institute. She also produces a YouTube Channel to make higher education more accessible.