Judith Bettelheim Papers

Born in 1944, Dr. Judith Bettelheim is an art historian, curator, and retired professor of art history, specializing in Afro-Caribbean art. After completing a Bachelor's degree in Art from Antioch College in 1967, she received a Master's in Art History from UCLA in 1970 and a Doctorate in African and African Diaspora Arts from Yale University in 1979. Throughout her considerable teaching career, Bettelheim has held positions at San Francisco State University, UCLA, and Santa Monica College.

Dr. Bettelheim has made conscious efforts to center the voices and creative outputs of underrepresented Afro-Diasporic artists and communities. Her fieldwork documents festival celebrations across the Caribbean and African Diasporic communities in the United States through extensive notetaking and photography. By capturing these ephemeral performances in fixed mediums, Bettelheim has published extensively on Caribbean festival performances, with such works as The Afro-Jamaican Jonkonnu Festival: Playing the Forces and Operating the Cloth (1979) and Cuban Festivals: A Century of Afro-Cuban Culture (2001). She has presented on Caribbean festival performance nationally and internationally, at the African Studies Association, the College Art Association, UCLA Fowler Museum, the University of Puerto Rico, and the University of Essex. Through her professional efforts, Dr. Bettelheim has made significant contributions to the art history canon and given prominence to the creative endeavors of contemporary Caribbean and Afro-Diasporic artists.

As an art researcher and curator, Bettelheim worked extensively with the Cuban visual artist, José Bedia (b. 1959). Bedia's artworks are heavily influenced by his Palo beliefs – a religion with its roots in Central Africa, brought to Cuba by enslaved members of the Kongo people. Bedia's initiation to the Palo religion and his artistic inspirations are thoroughly documented and explored by Bettelheim, culminating in the exhibition and major publication, Transcultural Pilgrim: Three Decades of Work by José Bedia (2011). Recorded interviews, transcripts, and historical exhibition catalogs forming the basis of the final exhibition and publication are included in this collection.