Petrine Archer-Straw was a British artist and influential art historian and curator who specialised in the art of the Caribbean people. In the words of Eddie Chambers: "In her work as an artist, academic, art historian, writer and curator, Archer-Straw consistently challenged the prevailing orthodoxies that treat Caribbean artists and cultural practice in geographical, racial and artistic isolation. In essence, her position was that we cannot fully understand or appreciate the practice of Caribbean artists without due consideration of broader factors such as migration, history, identity and, above all diaspora – the scattering of many black people beyond their ancestral homeland of Africa."
Early life
Petrine Archer-Straw was born in Birmingham, England, to Jamaican parents, and was raised during the 1960s in an atmosphere of "... racial pride, and activism". Her father arrived England in 1955 as a linotype press operator and subsequently sent for his family to join him. Archer-Straw notes that her home was a hub for the community. These were extremely formative experiences for the young Archer-Straw who also recalls how she "would do the rounds with my father,.... joining in house to house campaigning and, in the summer, attending the numerous rallies and protest marches. However, this community work eventually drew the ire of the right-wing British National Front and the family subsequently moved to Jamaica in the early 1970s, where Archer-Straw finished high school and started university.
Archer-Straw published numerous books and catalogues, including Eugene Palmer, New World Imagery, Negrophilia: Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s, Fifty Years, Fifty Artists, and Back to Black: Art, Cinema and the Racial Imaginary. Additionally, she taught at the Courtauld Institute at the University of London, served as the first Head of Art History at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Jamaica, and served as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow and Visiting Lecturer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She completed a two-year residency as a faculty guest in the Telluride House at Cornell. She taught the Caribbean Dialogs Live! course at TASP 2008 with Professor Petrina Dacres.
''Negrophilia''
Archer-Straw's book Negrophilia: Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s focused on the fashion for African artefacts, themes and emblems in Paris of the 1920s, including figures such as Josephine Baker. The book inspired a jazz album by Mike Ladd, Negrophilia: The Album, on Thirsty Ear. The album's lyrics combine references to the milieu that Archer-Straw defines with references to the civil rights struggle in the US and more recent pop music; Pitchfork said: "its best moments are stellar and exhilarating" and scored it 7.2/10.
