Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu is a Nigerian artist, art historian, critic, curator, and scholar whose work has significantly contributed to the study and interpretation of modern and contemporary African art. He is the Robert Schirmer Professor of Art and Archaeology and African American Studies at Princeton University, where he also serves as Director of the Africa World Initiative.
He is co-editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, a leading scholarly journal in the field. His contributions to art history and criticism have earned him numerous distinctions, including the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism, the Melville J. Herskovits Prize, election as a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2022, and appointment as Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford in 2023. In 2026, he received Princeton University’s Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities.
Through his teaching, research, writing, and curatorial work, Okeke-Agulu continues to advance critical scholarship on African art and its place within global art histories.