Henry John Drewal is the Evjue-Bascom Professor Emeritus of Art History and African-American Studies
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Adjunct Curator of African art at the Chazen Museum of Art from 1991 to 2019. His published works include more than 150 articles, several books, films, and exhibition catalogues including: Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought; Introspectives: Contemporary Art by Americans and Brazilians of African Descent; Beads, Body, and Soul: Art and Light in the Yorùbá Universe; Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and its Diasporas; and Striking Iron: The Art of
African Blacksmiths. His awards include a Guggenheim, Metropolitan Museum of Art Fellowships, three Fulbrights, and AIIS grants for work with the Siddis, Indians of African descent. He continues to explore the role of the senses and sense-abilities in shaping arts, persons, cultures and histories using his approach called Sensiotics.