Art is the one place we turn to for solace.
— Carrie Mae Weems

Dr. crystal am nelson is an assistant professor of African/Diasporic Visual Studies in the Art & Art History department at CU Boulder. Their research and teaching focuses on Black art and Black visual culture(s) as articulated through painting, photography, film/video, and performance. Their other interests include identity and representation, critical pleasure studies, and contemporary Black life.

nelson’s current project examines the visual culture of Black pleasure and the aesthetics of Black joy and safe space in the visual representations of quotidian Blackness as depicted by the painters labeled the Black romantic.

Dr. nelson’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Art Bulletin, Art Journal, Woman’s Art Journal, Visual Studies, Feminist Media Histories, Contact Sheet, Brooklyn Rail, caa.reviews, among other places.

Alongside their research and teaching, Dr. nelson has organized and co-organized several exhibitions including Heterotopia, Dark Desires, and Pictures and Progress: The Black Panther, 1966-2016 (with Drs. Cathy T. Thomas and Kiran Garcha).