Artists of African and Asian descent have been making art in the UK at least since the early twentieth century. However, despite this longstanding situation, a problem exists where art criticism continues to serve the art-works of these artists inadequately. A peculiar kind of eclipsing has taken place where instead of considering and talking directly about the work, the discussions have emphasised the ethnicity of the artist, and the general problematics of race and identity politics within the art establishment, thus deflecting attention away from how these art-works relate to or have influenced the story of twentieth century art. Coalesced under the term 'Black-British', this term can be considered as 'a metaphor for a political circumstance prescribed by struggles against economic exploitation and cultural domination: a state of consciousness that people of various pigmentations have experienced, empathized with, and responded to.' (Powell, 1997: 10) Here, the research will aim to elucidate a critical perspective on the complexities of trying to draw essentialist conclusions about the nature of a practice on the basis of national origin or diasporic affiliation. Black Artists and Modernism, BAM for short, is a 3-year research programme that will investigate the often-understated connections as well as points of conflict between Black-British artists' practice and the art-works' relationship to modernism. Here, the research sees modernism as an unfinished project that is extended in postmodernism, and it will look at what Stuart Hall calls the "conjuncture" of generations of Black-British artists that were 'for' and 'against' modernist dictates. By focussing our attention on art-works held in major public collections as well as key exhibitions, the research is designed to reach a wide audience from students and academics to a more general audience for the arts. The design of the research will produce a wide-range of materials. These include: An online multi-media website that will chronicle a national audit of art-works by Black-British artists held in public collections in the UK. A series of essays, interviews and videos that discuss key art-works and their inclusion in important collections, as well as historically important exhibitions. A series of public discussions will gather in places like Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, Manchester, London and Paris. Study days and symposia will be focused on signature art-works and exhibition histories looking at the impact of Black-British art on the broader narratives of modern and contemporary art practice. New displays will appear at museums like the Tate, as a way to re-think the connection between the art-work and the story of modernism. Working with Illuminations, the arts and media specialists renowned for their arts programming (including the Turner Prize programmes on Channel Four), the aim is to record the unfolding research process. Documentaries will be made for a variety of public media platforms including broadcast television. At the end of the three-year programme an edited book 'The Blackness of Modernism: reconsidering art-works, exhibitions and collecting the work of Black-British artists' will be published by Duke University Press.