Christopher B.  Steiner

Christopher Steiner teaches interdisciplinary courses in art history, anthropology and museum studies. His classes explore the traditional and contemporary arts of Africa; the visual representation of race and identity in art and film; the history of museums and contemporary museum controversies; kitsch and “bad” art; and the history and practice of studio and vernacular photography.

His field research in West Africa focused on the construction of value and meaning in art through transnational exchange, resulting in numerous articles and his award-winning book African Art in Transit (Cambridge University Press, 1994).

Over the past two decades, Steiner has curated exhibitions at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, Fairfield University Art Museum, the William Benton Museum of Art. and Shain Library at Connecticut College. His exhibitions include The Nut Museum: Visionary Art of Elizabeth Tashjian (2004); “It’s Only a Paper Moon”: Souvenir Photography in America, 1870–1950 (2017); Liberia, 1931–33: The Collections of Alfred J. Tulk (2018); Remembering the Nut Museum: Visionary Art of Elizabeth Tashjian (2022); Labors of Love: Work, Family and Play in American Folk Photography (2024); Behind the Curtain: The Art and Photobooth Collection of Näkki Goranin (2025); and Photography and the Painted Image (2026).

Steiner’s current research explores the history of vernacular or “folk” photography, with a particular focus on photo postcards. As part of this research, he has assembled a personal collection of approximately 20,000 vernacular photographs, including photo postcards, arcade and carnival portraits, and studio tintypes. His current book project, Hustling Pictures: Photography and the Commodification of Everyday Life, examines the history of photography through the lens of commerce and petty trade.

Major or minor in Art History
Major or minor in Anthropology
Museum Studies Certificate Program

Courses Taught

AHI/ANT/MSM 106 INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN ART

AHI/MSM 250 PERSPECTIVES ON PHOTOGRAPHY

AHI/ANT/MSM 280 INTRODUCTION TO MUSEUM STUDIES

AHI/ANT/MSM 281 CURRENT ISSUES IN MUSEUM STUDIES

AHI/ART/MSM 325 SECRECY AND THE INVISIBLE

AHI/ANT/CRE 356 IMAGINING OTHERNESS IN VISUAL CULTURE

AHI/ANT/MSM 450 BAD ART: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF TASTE

Selected Books, Articles and Exhibition Catalogs

Photography and the Painted Image, an exhibition curated by Chirstopher B. Steiner with assistance from students in AHI 250 (Fall 2025). New London: Lyman Allyn Art Museum, 2026.

“Ghost in the iPhone,” Connecticut College Magazine, pp. 12-25, Winter 2026.

Behind the Curtain: The Art and Photobooth Collection of Näkki Goranin, with essays by Näkki Goranin and Brian Wallis. An exhibition and catalog organized by Christopher B. Steiner with curatorial assistance from students in AHI 250 (Fall 2024). New London; Connecticut College, Shain Library, 2025.

Labors of Love: Work, Family and Play in American Folk Photography (The Natalie M. Curley Collection), with essays Natalie Curley and Lucy Sante. An exhibition and catalog organized by Christopher B. Steiner with curatorial assistance from students in AHI 250 (Fall 2023). New London: Connecticut College, Shain Library, 2024.

“When You Look at This, Think of Me.” In Real Photos Postcards: Pictures from a Changing Nation, edited by Lynda Klich and Benjamin Weiss. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, pp. 138-149, 2022.

The Collections of Alfred James Tulk: Liberia, 1931-33. Exhibition catalog. Fairfield University Museum of Art, 2018.

“Reading Time: An Anthropology of Clocks in the History of Photography.” In Exotic No More: Anthropology on the Front Lines, Second Edition, edited by Jeremy MacClancy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 337-62, 2019.

“The Missionary as Collector and Dealer: Dr. George W. Harley in Liberia, 1926-1960,” Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture 12(1): 36-51, 2018.

“The African Art Market as Ego-System,” with Silvia Forni. Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture 12(1): 1-7, 2018. 

A Companion to the Anthropology of Africa, edited with Roy Richard Grinker, Euclides Filipe and Stephen Lubkemann. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2019.

Africa in the Market: Twentieth-Century Art from the Amrad African Art Collection, edited with Silvia Forni. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum. Distributed by University of Washington Press, 2015.

“The Secret of the Masks: On the Social Construction of Power and Desire in the African Art Market,” pp. 147-163. In Africa in the Market: Twentieth-Century Art from the Amrad African Art Collection, edited with Silvia Forni. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum. Distributed by University of Washington Press, 2015.

“Museum Censorship.” In The Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics: Redefining Ethics for the Twenty-First Century Museum, edited by Janet Marstine, pp. 393-413. London: Taylor and Francis, 2011.

Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation, written and edited with Roy Richard Grinker and Stephen C. Lubkemann. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1997 and 2010.

“The Tradition of African Art: Reflections on the Social Life of a Subject.” In Questions of Tradition, edited by Mark Salber Phillips and Gordon Schochet, pp. 88-109. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.

“The Taste of Angels in the Art of Darkness: Fashioning the Canon of African Art.” In Art History and Its Institutions, edited by Elizabeth Mansfield, pp. 132-45. New York: Routledge, 2002.

“Art/Anthropology/Museums: Revulsions and Revolutions.” In Exotic No More: Anthropology on the Front Lines, edited by Jeremy MacClancy, pp. 399-417. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

“Rights of Passage: On the Liminal Identity of Art in the Border Zone.” In The Empire of Things: Regimes of Value and Material Culture, edited by Fred R. Myers, pp. 207-231. School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2001.

Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds, edited and introduced with Ruth B. Phillips. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

“Can the Canon Burst?” The Art Bulletin 78(2): 213- 217, 1996.

“Travel Engravings and the Construction of the Primitive.” In Prehistories of the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism, edited by Elazar Barkan and Ronald Bush, pp. 202-225, 416-418. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995. 

“The Art of the Trade: On the Creation of Value and Authenticity in the African Art Market.” In The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology, edited by George E. Marcus and Fred R. Myers, pp. 151-165, 1995.

“Technologies of Resistance: Structural Alteration of Trade Cloth in Four Societies,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 119: 75-94, 1994.

African Art in Transit. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

“Body Personal and Body Politic: Adornment and Leadership in Cross-Cultural Perspective,” Anthropos 85(4-6): 431-445.

“Another Image of Africa: Toward an Ethnohistory of European Cloth Marketed in West Africa, 1873-1960,” Ethnohistory 32(2): 91-110.

In the News…

https://thecollegevoice.org/2026/02/12/photography-and-the-painted-image-at-the-lyman-allyn-museum/

https://www.conncoll.edu/news/news-archive/2024/behind-the-curtain/

https://www.conncoll.edu/news/news-archive/2023/perspectives-in-photography/

https://www.conncoll.edu/news/cc-magazine/past-issues/2024-issues/winter-2024/cc-magazine-behind-the-scenes/

https://thecollegevoice.org/2019/11/06/ask-me-about-the-nut-museum/

https://thecollegevoice.org/2017/04/04/paper-moons-at-lyman-allyn/

https://thecollegevoice.org/2010/12/13/%E2%80%9Cnut-lady%E2%80%99s%E2%80%9D-life-work-inherited-by-cc/