Anita Grants holds a PhD and MA in Art History from Concordia University and has been teaching in the Faculty of Fine Arts since 2000. Her dissertation examined the nature of the influence of John Ruskin on art, architecture and art training in Canada and developed out of her MA research, which considered the impact of some of the more radical theories of the mid and later nineteenth century on the work of Canadian painter/educator Arthur Lismer. She is a regular invited lecturer at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; her topics have included the painting of Edouard Vuillard, artistic life in early twentieth-century Paris, art at the time of Catherine the Great, Pop Art, originality and illusion in the decorative arts, and the influence of English painting on the films of Alfred Hitchcock. In other public talks, subjects have included the Mona Lisa as pop icon, Sistine Chapel, Ruskinian moralism, portraiture, and Montreal's commercial architecture. Since 2011 her thoughts on art and society have been featured in the radio program "Up Front" on Preston FM (England). She is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal The Eighth Lamp: Ruskin Studies Today.
Research interests
- Social and Political Influences on Artists and Their Art
- Application of John Ruskin's Art Theories
- Changing Approaches to Museum Pedagogy
