Juul Van Haver

Juul Van Haver joined the PhD program at Columbia in 2024. He is interested in the arts of Africa, the historiography of Africanist art history, and global modernisms. His research particularly focuses on the complex and diverse engagements of African artists during the independence era with ideas of modernism and its global (dis)entanglements. In 2023, he received his MA degree in Art History from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts and in 2021 he obtained his MA in Art History, Musicology, and Theatre Studies from Ghent University. For his thesis, he examined the multiple narratives of modern art in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by analyzing the differing perceptions and definitions of “authenticity” that underpin them. In the past, he has worked at NYU’s Department of Art History, Marlborough Gallery, the Vandenhove Center for Architecture and Art, and was co-curator of “Kenneth Kemble and Silvia Torras: The Formative Years, 1956-63.” In 2021, he received a Belgian American Educational Foundation (BAEF) Fellowship and a grant from the Fernand Lazard Foundation to explore his academic and curatorial interests in New York.