Anne Lafont

Anne Lafont is a Professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), where she is Director of Studies and affiliated with the Center for Research on Arts and Language (CRAL) and the Center for History and Theory of the Arts (CEHTA). Her work focuses on art history, visual cultures of modern worlds, knowledge and creation in colonial societies, and intersections of art, race, and gender studies.

• Key Research Areas: Art History, Visual Cultures, Colonial Societies, Art and Race, Historiography, Women's History in Art.

Lafont has published extensively on art and knowledge in imperial contexts, including The Learned Artist Conquering the Modern World (2010) and Art and Race. The African (all) against the Eye of the Enlightenment (2019, winner of the Arnold and Vitale Blokh Prize). She co-edited Africa and the World. Stories Reconnected from Prehistory to the 21st Century (2022) and contributed to the 2019 Musée d'Orsay exhibition The Black Model from Géricault to Matisse.

Her 2012 edited volumes Plumes et Pinceaux. Discours de femmes sur l’art en Europe 1750-1850 highlight gender in art discourse. She taught at Williams College (2021-2022) through a Clark Professorship and received a Villa Albertine grant for research on African-American art.

Scientific Awards:

• Maryse Condé Prize for Research
• Arnold and Vitale Blokh Prize for L’art et la race (2019)

Lafont's recent work addresses transcultural objects, racial social relations, and contested heritage, reflecting her commitment to recentering art history through postcolonial and gendered lenses.