The Transdisciplinary Aesthetics Foundation (TAF) was established in September 2014 to explore, cultivate, and sustain transdisciplinary research in aesthetics (critical thinking about art, culture, design, everyday life, nature) and to educate the general public as well as members of the academic community and art world about the importance and relevance of this research. The emphasis is on “transdisciplinary” aesthetics because, while aesthetics is part of philosophy, it is also practiced in many other disciplines, in the arts, and in the public (e.g., in the law). Just as art is no longer confined to the museum, even while museums have grown in architectural scale and cultural significance, aesthetics has expanded beyond philosophy and has recuperated its broader ties to sensation or sensibility integrated into everyday life, politics, and society at large.

Activities of the Foundation may include: organizing or financially supporting symposia, exhibitions, or the like devoted to transdisciplinary aesthetics; publishing (in print, online, or otherwise) some of the results of the symposia, exhibitions, or the like; or financially supporting students, artists, researchers, or the like participating in the above activities in transdisciplinary aesthetics.

TAF is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3)[tax-exempt], private foundation.

For more information about the past and upcoming Questioning Symposium series,
please click on the SYMPOSIA, PROGRAMS, or VIDEOS tabs above.

For a recent TAF-supported publication, please see:
Black Art and Aesthetics: Relationalities, Interiorities, Reckonings,
co-edited by Michael Kelly and Monique Roelofs, published by Bloomsbury Academic:

https://bloomsburycp3.codemantra.com/viewer/654a6751f4428a00018aaccc
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https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/black-art-and-aesthetics-9781350294622/

Black Art and Aesthetics Anthology Endorsements

Finally, we have a book that explores and tracks the fugitive, complicated, intractable, and vital idea of Black aesthetics with the expansive critical and intellectual sophistication that the scholarship has been waiting for since the 1960s. Finally.”–Chika Okeke-Agulu, Professor of Art and Archaeology and African-American Studies, Princeton University

“This impressive and vibrant assemblage showcases the beauty and brilliance of Black aesthetics. Each investigation buzzes with strategies for creating, living, and being despite difficulty. …Black Art and Aesthetics promises to remake how we see the world.”–Amber Jamilla Musser, Professor of English, CUNY Graduate Center

“An important collection of cutting-edge essays that explore the possibility of ‘revalorizing’ Black aesthetics in ways that embrace both complex continuities and ruptures in the freighted history of aesthetics.”–Tina Campt, Professor of Humanities, Princeton University

“This wonderful anthology is not just a juxtaposition of texts and works of art in a still tableau. It is, fortunately, a powerful expression of the movement and life force of the inexhaustible fountain of Black aesthetics: fons africanus and fons americanus all at once.”–Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Professor of French and of Philosophy, and Director of the Institute of African Studies, Columbia University

“A comprehensive statement on the continuing vitality of Black aesthetics and a revaluation of the cultural forces that have been driving the production of art in the Black diaspora. …[T]his volume will serve as a model of critical thinking about Black aesthetics for a long time.”–Simon Gikandi, Professor of English, Princeton University

“A welcome and much needed contribution to the philosophically- informed study of Black art and aesthetic practices. The range of insight is impressive and the acuity of the analyses even more so.”–Robert J. Gooding-Williams, Professor of African-American Studies and of Philosophy, Columbia University