Augustus Lavinus Casely-HayfordOBE (born 1964) is a British curator, cultural historian, broadcaster and lecturer with ancestral Ghanaian roots in the Casely-Hayford family.[1]
In 2010, as part of the Wonderful Africa Season,[7] he presented Lost Kingdoms of Africa, four 60-minute television programmes for BBC Two and BBC Four;[8] in 2014, the series was broadcast by the French-speaking TV channel Histoire. He was commissioned to present a second series in February 2012. He wrote the book Lost Kingdoms of Africa in 2012, published by Bantam Press. He presented a study of William Hogarth and the 18th century for the television series The Genius of British Art, on Channel 4, in 2010 and hosted The Culture Show for BBC 2 in 2012.[9] In 2016 Casely-Hayford presented the television series Tate Walks for Sky Arts. He is also the author of a book on Timbuktu, published in 2018 by Ladybird/Penguin. Since 2022, he has hosted a reboot of the long-running archeological television show Time Team, viewable on the Time Team Official Channel on YouTube.
He is the former executive director of Arts Strategy for Arts Council England.[15][16] He was previously Director of inIVA (Institute of International Visual Art),[17] a London-based arts organisation with a particular emphasis on international practice, which collaborates with partner venues throughout the UK and worldwide. Prior to this, he was the Director of Africa 05,[18] the largest African arts season ever hosted in Britain,[19] involving throughout 2005 more than 150 cultural organisations, including the BBC,[20] the aim of which Casely-Hayford said was to create "sustainable change in the way the art world – and the public – thinks about Africa. ...We don't want this just to be about one year."[21]
He has presented Tony Knox's award-winning South Bank Show about the "Flags of the Fante Coast", produced a documentary on Chris Ofili for Channel 4 and presented several series on African culture for BBC World Service. He has presented Brit Art – Where to Now? for BBC Four.[24] He was a commissioner of arts for the Greater London Authority.
He lectures on world art at Sotheby's, Goldsmiths College and the University of Westminster, and is a consultant for organisations such as the United Nations, the Arts Council and the BBC. He is a Clore Fellow and is a Trustee of the National Trust, a member of English Heritage's Blue Plaque Group and a member of Tate's "Tate for All Board". He is a Judge for the Art Fund's "Museum of the Year" in 2016. He was formerly a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery and a Council Member of Tate Britain. He also sits on the Caine Prize Council[25] and is a spokesperson for the National Archives' Explore Your Archive programme. Casely-Hayford is a supporter of Sense International.[26][27]
In 2019, he was named as the inaugural director of the forthcoming V&A East,[28][29] due to open in east London in 2025,[30] with Yinka Shonibare as an ambassador for the new museum.[31]
In February 2022, Casely-Hayford was announced as the new presenter of the online revival of Time Team, alongside Natalie Haynes.[32]
Personal life
He is the brother of fashion designer Joe Casely-Hayford, OBE (1956–2019), and of lawyer Margaret Casely-Hayford, and (as son of Victor Casely-Hayford, an accountant who trained as a barrister)[33][34] the grandson of J. E. Casely Hayford (1866–1930), the great Gold Coast thinker, writer and politician.[35] He is married and has one daughter, and lives in London with his family.[36]