Dr. Robert Farris Thompson was a professor of art history Yale University and agreed to be a consultant on the Geneseo Migrant Center's
African Past: Migrant Present Exhibit. He also delivered a lecture at SUNY Geneseo--advertised via this hand-drawn announcement--and later at the 17th Eastern Stream Conference on the Education of Migrant Children in Philadelphia (1987).
Thompson had been born into a wealthy white family in Texas, when introduction to mambo music during a trip to Mexico changed his life trajectory. He became a musician but professionally a scholar of art across the African diaspora, coining the term "Black Atlantic" to reconceptualize its influence across a wide range of cultures in the Americas. Thompson was particularly noted for his site-specific research and rigorous scholarship at a time when African art was considered "primitive." Not long before his lecture at Geneseo, Thompson had published perhaps his most widely read study,
Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy (1984).
Work Consulted: Holland Cotter, "Robert Farris Thompson, ‘Guerrilla Scholar’ of African Art, Dies at 88,"
New York Times 12 Dec. 2021.
Link here