Nicholas Brown is a librarian and doctoral candidate researching Black British artists and print culture, with particular attention to independent magazine publishing. His research examines how magazines produced by and about Black artists and writers in the 20th century functioned as key sites of contestation, fostering new positions and understandings of how visual arts intersect with issues of race, class, gender, sexuality and the legacies of colonialism.
He has managed libraries and archives including the Stuart Hall Library at Iniva (The Institute of International Visual Arts), The British Museum, The Hayward Gallery, Christie’s Education, and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. He was a librarian at the Courtauld Institute of Art and Associate Lecturer at the University of Glasgow.
His study at University of the Arts London was made possible by funding from the Paul Mellon Centre’s ‘New Narratives’ Doctoral Scholarship. Nicholas is a member of the British Art Network’s Black British Art Group, has contributed to the Postcolonial Print Cultures Network and is a trustee of the artists’ book publisher Book Works. In 2018 he organised a conference bringing together artists, academics, curators, librarians and archivists to examine the documentation of art in relation to art historiography.
