Wayne Modest receives Iris Foundation Award

Wayne Modest is to be honoured as Outstanding Mid-Career Scholar at the 27th Annual Iris Foundation Awards Luncheon on 3 April.

Wayne Modest is Professor of Material Culture and Critical Heritage Studies at the Faculty of Humanities at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam and Director of Content at Wereldmuseum, the National Museum of World Cultures in the Netherlands with branches in Amsterdam, Leiden and Rotterdam, and the Research Center for Material Culture. He is also a member of the board of trustees of the German Lost Art Foundation.

A cultural studies scholar by training, Modest works at the intersection between material culture, memory and heritage, focussing on colonialism and its aftermath in Europe and the Caribbean. He is co-editor of Matters of Belonging: Ethnographic Museums in a Changing Europe (Sidestone Press, 2019) and Victorian Jamaica (Duke University Press, 2018). He is currently working on several forthcoming publication projects, including Museum Temporalities and Curating the Colonial. Modest has also (co-)curated several exhibitions, most recently the Kingston Biennial entitled Pressure (2022) and What We Forget (2019).

The Iris Foundation Award was established in 1997 to recognise scholars, patrons and professionals who have made outstanding contributions in the fields of the decorative arts, design history and material culture. For details of other award winners, see: https://www.bgc.bard.edu/about/articles/262/27th-annual-iris-foundation-awards