Darby English awarded ASAP 2020 Book Prize

Darby English awarded ASAP 2020 Book Prize

October 26, 2020

Darby English

Congratulations to Darby English, the Carl Darling Buck Professor of Art History, for being awarded the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP) 2020 Book Prize for his book, To Describe a Life: Notes from the Intersection of Art and Race Terror, (Yale University Press, 2019). Granted by the 2020 Book Prize committee, they found English’s formal analysis of Kerry James Marshall in “The Painter and the Police” especially outstanding as he lets Marshall’s picture be challenging and weird, in relation to the perceived critique of the command “Stop Killing Us” generated by the Black Lives Matter movement.

ASAP is an international, nonprofit association dedicated to discovering and articulating the aesthetic, cultural, ethical, and political identities of the contemporary arts. ASAP’s Book Prize is awarded annually for the book that makes the most significant contribution to the study of the arts of the present. Books are considered without regard to specific political point of view, aesthetic position, country of origin, publisher, or topic: any book that discusses the contemporary arts.

Read the official announcement from ASAP.