MacKenzie Moon Ryan, PhD

Professor of Art History | Dept Co-Chair AY 2024-25

Dr. Ryan specializes in the history of African and global art, with particular interest in textiles, fashion, trade, colonialism, cross-cultural exchange, and museum studies. Her research focuses on global networks of trade, African textiles and fashion, especially kanga cloth, and consumption of commodities to create conceptions of self. She teaches undergraduate art history courses on African art, global art, the history of fashion, and museum studies

Dr. Ryan is also on the editorial board of the scholarly journal, African Arts, as a part of the University of Florida Consortium.

Education

B.A. Hamline University, 2006
M.A. University of Florida, 2008
Ph.D. University of Florida, 2013

Courses Taught

ARH 145 Introduction to African Art
Introduces archaeological, historical, modern, and contemporary works of African art in their aesthetic, cultural, and historical contexts. Examines sculpture, masquerade, textiles, painting, photography, architecture, and personal objects.
ARH 243 Fashion in Africa
Trace African fashion from cloth to everyday clothing and high-fashion catwalks between the 19th century and today. Explore how African dress reveals information about culture, history, political systems, religious worship, gendered relations, and social organization.
ARH 241 African Art and the City
Explores African art through the lens of historical and contemporary cities. Examines the visual art--architecture to royal sculpture to contemporary mixed media works--from a different 20 African cities. Situates artworks and artists within their urban place and time.
ARH 140 Introduction to Global Art
Examine artwork from the Middle East to Japan to Africa, taking a close look at sculpture, painting, architecture, pottery, textiles, and photography as well as the relationship between form and function.
ARH 404 Museum Studies Practicum
Analyze the development of museums, interrogate issues of display, and participate in actual museum work. Students will apply art history skills to a professional exhibition at the Rollins Museum of Art.
ARH 343 Global Trade in African Textiles
Uses African women’s insatiable desire for fashionable textiles as a nexus to understand global trade. Explores the rise and fall of colonial powers in east Africa through an investigation of cloth trading relationships. Analyzes how trading relationships transformed east African religious, cultural, political and economic systems through conspicuous consumption and displays of self.
ARH 341 African Art & Colonialism
Studies late 19th and early 20th century African art within the context of European colonialism. Focuses on episodes of change and collection in Africa and display and reception in Europe. Pays particular attention to influence of European colonialism on pre-existing African artistic traditions, social structures, power dynamics, gender relations, and religions.

Articles and Essays

Ryan, MacKenzie Moon. “From unbleached to indigo-dyed to printed synthetics: an explosion of color and pattern in cotton textiles produced for the east African market in the late 19th century.” In Colour, vol. 4, edited by Christine Checinska, Bharti Parmar, Riikka Räisänen, and Nicola Stylianou. Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of World Textiles, edited by Vivienne Richmond and Janis Jefferies. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024.

Ryan, MacKenzie Moon. “Kanga Cloths at Vlisco: An Object-Based Study of Dutch Printing for the Colonial East African Market, 1867-1971.” African Arts. Special Issue: “African Textiles, Fashionable Textiles,” edited by MacKenzie Moon Ryan. Vol. 56, no. 3 (Autumn 2023), 56-71.

Ryan, MacKenzie Moon. Editor’s Introduction to Special Issue: “African Textiles, Fashionable Textiles.” African Arts. Vol. 56, no. 3 (Autumn 2023), 6-7.

Ryan, MacKenzie Moon. Editor of Special Issue, “African Textiles, Fashionable Textiles.” African Arts, Vol. 56, no. 3 (Autumn 2023).

Ryan, MacKenzie Moon. “Women in Fashion and Textiles.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Women’s History, Oxford Reference Encyclopedia of African History, 1-27. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Ryan, MacKenzie Moon. “The Art of the Trade: Merchant and Production Networks of Kanga Cloth in the Colonial Era.” In World on the Horizon: Swahili Arts Across the Indian Ocean, edited by Prita Meier and Allyson Purpura, 289-309. Champaign, IL: Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2018. Scholarly Exhibition Catalogue, distributed by University of Washington Press.

Exhibition on view at Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 31 Aug 2017 – 24 Mar 2018
Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, 9 May – 3 Sep 2018
Fowler Museum, University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) 21 Oct 2018 – 10 Feb 2019

Ryan, MacKenzie Moon. “Converging Trades and New Technologies: The Emergence of Kanga Textiles on the Swahili Coast in the late nineteenth century.” In Textile Trades, Consumer Cultures, and the Material Worlds of the Indian Ocean: An Ocean of Cloth, edited by Pedro Machado, Gwyn Campbell and Sarah Fee, 253-286. Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies. London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2018.

Ryan, MacKenzie Moon. “A Decade of Design: The Global Invention of the Kanga, 1876-1886.” Textile History. Special issue “Entangled Histories: Translocal Textile Trades in Eastern Africa, c. 1100 to the early twentieth century,” edited by Sarah Fee and Pedro Machado. Vol. 48, No. 1 (spring 2017): 101-32. Distributed by Taylor & Francis.

Ryan, MacKenzie Moon. “Kanga Textile Design, Education, and Production in contemporary Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.” Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings, 424-33. Crosscurrents: Land, Labor, and the Port. Textile Society of America's 15th Biennial Symposium, Savannah, GA, October 19-23, 2016. Open-access publication; University of Lincoln Digital Commons, 2016: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/1002/.

Ryan, MacKenzie Moon. “The Emergence of the Kanga: A Distinctly East African Textile.” In Africa Interweave: Textile Diasporas, edited by Susan Cooksey, 128-31. Gainesville, FL: Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, 2011.

Exhibition on view at the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, Florida, 8 Feb – 8 May 2011
Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire, 28 Sept 2013 – 12 Jan 2014

Curatorial Projects

Curator, African Apparel: Threaded Transformations across the 20th Century, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, now Rollins Museum of Art, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, 18 January - 17 May 2020

Exhibitionof 71 African textiles, items of clothing, headwear, and jewelry primarily lent by William D. and Norma Canelas Roth '65
Morgan Snoap '20 and Cristina Toppin '19, Student-Faculty Collaborative Research Scholarship Project, summers 2018 & 2019
Accompanying scholarly catalogue published by Scala Arts Publishers, Inc., 2020 and available for purchase at the museum or Amazon

Consultant, Social Fabric: African Textiles Today, The British Museum, London, United Kingdom, 14 February – 21 April 2013

Donated six kanga cloth sketches, 2012,2026.1-6, designed by K.G. Peera, aka Miwani Mdogo, ca. 1960s collected Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 2011, associated with C. Itoh & Co., Japanese merchant-converter firm.
Sketch 2012,2026.1 and research featured in exhibition and illustrated in publication,African Textiles Today, by Chris Spring (London: The British Museum Press, 2012), 128
Subsequently on view: William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow, 20 Feb – 29 May 2016
- Ipswich Museum, Ipswich 19 Sep 2015 – 22 Jan 2016
- Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery, Exeter, 26 May – 6 Sep 2015
- Powell-Cotton Museum, Birchington-on-Sea, Kent, 14 Feb – 17 May 2015

Consultant, Africa Interweave: Textile Diasporas, Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, 8 February – 8 May 2011

Donated six kanga textiles, 2012.38.1-6, collected Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 2010
Kanga 2012.38.6 and research featured in exhibition and illustrated in catalogue,
Africa Interweave: Textile Diasporas, edited by Susan Cooksey (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida, 2011), 128
Subsequently on view: Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, 28 September 2013 – 12 January 2014

Artwork Entries

Ryan, MacKenzie Moon. “Yinka Shonibare.” In Art for Rollins, vol. 4. Rollins Museum of Art, 2023.

Ryan, MacKenzie Moon. “13 African Masks.” In My Name Is Maryan. edited by Alison M. Gingeras. Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami/Koenig Books, 2023, 7.

Ryan, MacKenzie Moon. “William Kentridge.” In Art Encounters: Selections from the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, 51-52. Scala Arts Publishers, 2019.

Reviews

Ryan, MacKenzie Moon. Symposium panel: “Trade in Cotton and Manufactured Cloth from Europe, to Africa, to North America,” Textile Society of America (TSA) 15th Biennial Symposium, Crosscurrents: Land, Labor and the Port, Savannah, GA, 28, no. 2 (2016): 23.

Ryan, MacKenzie Moon. Exhibition: Kabas and Couture: Contemporary Ghanaian Fashion, Harn Museum of Art. African Arts. 49, no. 2 (2016): 86-9.

Ryan, MacKenzie Moon. Book: The Politics of Dress in Somali Culture, by Heather Marie Akou. Museum Anthropology Review. 9, no. 2 (2015): 183-5.

Moon, MacKenzie, Eugenia S. Martinez, Courtnay Micots, and Amy Schwartzott. Symposium: “Global Africa: Through the Lens of Visual Culture, Fourteenth Triennial Symposium on African Art.” African Arts 41, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 8-11.

Moon, MacKenzie, and Robin Poynor. Exhibition: Resonance and Inspiration: New Works by Magdalene Odundo, Harn Museum of Art. African Arts 40, no. 2 (Summer 2007): 86-7.