Christian Kravagna is an art historian and curator. He is Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. His recent publications include Das amerikanische Museum: Sklaverei, Schwarze Geschichte und der Kampf um Gerechtigkeit in Museen der Südstaaten, 2019 (with Cornelia Kogoj), and Transmoderne: Eine Kunstgeschichte des Kontakts, 2017 (Transmodern: An Art History of Contact 1920-1960, forthcoming 2022 with Manchester University Press). Among the volumes he edited are The Museum as Arena: Artists on Institutional Critique, 2001, and Privileg Blick: Kritik der visuellen Kultur, 1997. In the field of postcolonial/transcultural art history he organized conferences like The Routes of Modernism: Artistic Mobility, Protagonists, Platforms, Networks (with Simone Wille), Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Museum of Modern Art Vienna, 2018; Universalisms in Conflict: Postcolonial Challenges in Art History and Philosophy (with Ruth Sonderegger), Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2012; Abstract Space – Concrete Media: Avant-gardes Beyond Western Modernism, Museum of Modern Art Vienna (with Sabeth Buchmann) 2011; Transcultural Perspectives on African Art (history), Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Free University Berlin 2008; International Art: Global Aesthetics or Cultures of Difference? Museum of Modern Art Vienna 2006. 

Between 2005 and 2014 Kravagna was artistic director of Kunstraum Lakeside in Klagenfurt (with Hedwig Saxenhuber). He curated several exhibitions in Austria, Germany, Slovakia and India on issues of migration and globalization. He is currently working on a book which explores the relations between Austrian and African American artists and intellectuals between the two world wars.

Christian Kravagna at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna