Canada Research Chair in Modern Culture

Synopsis
Ruth Phillips researches visual and material culture as aspects of larger processes of culture contact and colonization in order to contribute to the development of new approaches to museological and academic representations of First Nations art.

Research and Development
As the Canada Research Chair in Modern Culture, Phillips has created the Visual Studies Laboratory in Carleton’s Institute of Comparative Studies in Literature, Art, and Culture (ICSLAC), funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario Innovation Fund, and Carleton University. The Laboratory hosts the work of the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Cultures (GRASAC), which Phillips founded in 2005.

GRASAC is an international collaboration of over fifty researchers based in universities, museums, and indigenous communities. Its members are developing new understandings of Great Lakes systems of expressive culture that incorporate both Western and indigenous knowledge and perspectives. In 2008, GRASAC launched its innovative multi-disciplinary database, using software developed with its industry partner, Ideeclic, of Gatineau, Quebec. The database supports the work of GRASAC researchers and ICSLAC students and facilitates digital repatriation to indigenous communities.

It also supports two book projects Phillips is currently completing, Seeing Through Translation: Visuality and Cultural Exchange in the Great Lakes, and Museum Pieces: Exhibiting Native Art in Canadian Museums.

Biography
Ruth Phillips turned her attention to Native North American art after earning a doctorate in African art history from the School of African and Oriental Studies at the University of London. She began her career at Carleton in 1979, pioneering the teaching of indigenous North American art history in Canada.  She has curated exhibitions for and consulted to major museums in Canada and the United State.  From 1997-2003 she served as director of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, where she was also Professor of Anthropology and Art History. In 2003 she returned to Carleton as the Canada Research Chair in Modern Culture. Teaching graduate courses in the M.A. in art history offered by the School for Studies in Art and Culture and in the doctoral program in Cultural Mediations offered by the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art, and Culture.  Between 2004-8 she served as president of CIHA, the international association of art historians.

Major Awards/Honours

• 2009-10 William Lyon MacKenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies, Harvard University
• 2009 Leverhulme Visiting Professor, University of Cambridge
• 2007 Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
• 2003 Fellow, Clark Art Institute
• 2001 British Academy Fellowship
• 1996-97 Fellowship, National Gallery of Canada
• 1993-94 Marston Lafrance Fellow, Carleton University
• 1991-92 Davidson Dunton Research Lecturer, Carleton University
• 1989 Canadian Museums Association (Exhibition Research)

Contact
School for Studies in Art and Culture: Art History
Department: 613-520-3993
Work: 613-520-2600 ext. 2350
Email: ruth_phillips@carleton.ca