Rita Keegan

Rita Keegan (born 1949) is an American-born artist, lecturer and archivist. She is a multi-media artist whose work uses video and digital technologies. Keegan is best known for her involvement with in the UK's Black Arts Movement in the 1980s and her work documenting artists of colour in the UK.

Born Rita Morrison in New York City to a Dominican mother and Canadian father, she described her upbringing in the Bronx as having "more in common with an English/Commonwealth background". She graduated from the High School of Art and Design focusing on illustration and costume design, then obtained a fine arts degree at the San Francisco Art Institute, where her teachers included the photographer Imogen Cunningham and the African-American artist Mary O'Neill. Keegan moved to London, England, in the late 1970s.

Keegan originally trained as a painter but in the 1980s begin to incorporate lens-based media, using the photocopier and computer in both 2D and installation work. In 1984 she co-founded "Community Copyart" in London. The GLC-funded organisation was an affordable resource centre for voluntary groups to create they own print material in addition to working with artists who wanted to use the photocopier as a form of printmaking.

Keegan was a founding member of the artists' collectives Brixton Art Gallery in 1982, and later Women's Work and Black Women in View. She went on to co-curate Mirror Reflecting Darkly, Brixton Art Gallery's first exhibition by the Black Women Artists collective. From 1985 Keegan was a staff member at the Women Artists Slide Library (WASL), where she established and managed the Women Artists of Colour Index. She was Director of the African and Asian Visual Arts Archive from 1992 to 1994.

Keegan taught New Media and Digital Diversity at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she also helped establish the digital-media undergraduate course in the Historical and Cultural Studies department.

• 2006 Transformations, Lewisham Arthouse and Horniman Museum, London (solo)
• 1997 Transforming the Crown: African, Asian and Caribbean Artists in Britain, 1966-1996, Studio Museum in Harlem, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Caribbean Cultural Center (Manhattan), New York
• 1998 Family Histories: Eating with Our Memories, Sleeping with the Ancestors, 198 Gallery, London (solo)
• 1995 Time Machine: Ancient Egypt and Contemporary Art, InIVA and British Museum, London
• 1993 Rites of Passage, ICA, London (solo)
• 1992 Trophies of Empire, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol
• 1992 White Noise: Artists Working with Sound, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
• 1991 Four X 4 curated by Eddie Chambers, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton
• 1991 Family Album: An exhibition by Brixton Black Women Artists, Copyart Resource Centre, London
• 1990 Let the Canvas Come to Life with Dark Faces, Bluecoat
• 1985 Mirror Reflecting Darkly: Black Women's Art, Brixton Art Gallery, London
• 1983 Women's Work, Brixton Art Gallery, London

• "Exhibitions and Special Exhibits since 1948". Horniman Museum and Gardens. Retrieved 21 September 2015. 
• ^
• Holland Cotter, "ART REVIEW; This Realm of Newcomers, This England", The New York Times, 24 October 1997.
• "Time Machine: Ancient Egypt and Contemporary Art". InIVA. Retrieved 21 September 2015. 
• ^ "Keegan, Rita - Bibliography and Exhibitions". African American Visual Artists Database. 
• Chambers, Eddie (1991). Four X 4. ISBN 0951329014.  Diaspora Artists.
• "Mirror Reflecting Darkly – Black Womens Art – Womens Work 4". Brixton Art Gallery Archive. Retrieved 1 December 2015.