Constantine Petridis

Constantine Petridis, chair and curator of Arts of Africa, joined the Art Institute in 2016. He recently co-curated the 2020 exhibition Malangatana: Mozambique Modern with Hendrik Folkerts and Felicia Mings, and in 2019 he oversaw the refresh of the museum’s permanent gallery of Arts of Africa. He also serves as a research associate at the Field Museum and is a corresponding member of the Belgian Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences.

Before coming to Chicago, he held research, curatorial, and teaching positions at the Research Foundation - Flanders, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Case Western Reserve University, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. An accomplished author, his most recent publications include the monograph Luluwa: Central African Art Between Heaven and Earth (2018) and the edited volume Speaking of Objects: African Art at the Art Institute of Chicago (2020). He holds a PhD in art history and a master’s in art history and archaeology from Ghent University in his native Belgium.