Richard J. Powell (MFA, Howard University; Ph.D., Yale University) is the John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art & Art History at Duke University. He is the author of Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson, Black Art: A Cultural History, Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture and Going There: Black Visual Satire. Powell has also curated numerous art exhibitions, most notably Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance, To Conserve A Legacy: American Art at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist. From 2007 until 2010, Powell was Editor-in-Chief of The Art Bulletin.

The African diaspora generated a wide array of artistic achievements in the past century, from blues to reggae, from the paintings of Henry Ossawa Tanner to the video installations of Keith Piper. Powell's study concentrates on the works of art themselves and on how these works use black culture as both subject and context. 190 illustrations.