Anne Whitelaw, PhD

Anne Whitelaw joined the Department of Art History at Concordia in January 2011 following 11 years as a faculty member in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Alberta. Her areas of teaching expertise include the history of visual culture in Canada, theories of museums and exhibitions, historiography and archives, and the history of advertising.

Whitelaw's research examines the intersections of art historiography and cultural institutions in Canada, with a particular focus on practices of exhibition and collecting as a means of understanding the formation of nationhood She has published extensively on the display of Canadian art at the National Gallery of Canada, on the integration of Aboriginal art into the permanent displays of national museums, and on the work of settler collectors in Canada. She is the author of Spaces and Places for Art: Making Art Institutions in Western Canada 1912-1990 (MQUP 2017) and is co-editor with Brian Foss and Sandra Paikowsky of The Visual Arts in Canada: The Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2010).  Whitelaw is the co-leader of a SSHRC-funded partnership development grant examining the global circulation of objects from northern North America, with Beverly Lemire (University of Alberta) and Laura Peers (Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford) - see objectlives.com; she is also writing a book on the work of volunteer women in North American art museums.

Areas of Expertise

• History of visual and material Culture in Canada
• Museums and cultural institutions
  
• Women and museums
• Exhibitions and collecting
• The writing of Canadian art history
  
• Settler-colonial Theory

Distinctions & Awards

2016
ARRE Grant, Concordia University
Spaces and Places for Art, publication grant

2014
SSHRC Connections Grant
Settler-Colonial Art History Workshop II (October 2014)

2014
SSHRC Partnership Development Grant (2014-17)
co-applicant (PI: Beverly Lemire, University of Alberta)
Object Lives and Global Histories in Northern North America: Networks, Localities and Material Culture 1700s-2000s

2013
ARRE Grant, Concordia University
Settler-Colonial Art History Workshop I (October 2013)

SSHRC Insight Grant (2013-16)
participant (PI: Johanne Sloan, Concordia University)
Networked Art History: Assembling Contemporary Canadian Art from the 1960s to the Present

2012
ARRE Grant, Concordia University
Universities Art Association of Canada Conference

2009
Killam Fund President's Grants for the Creative and Performing Arts, University of  Alberta

2007
Killam Fund President's Grants for the Creative and Performing Arts, University of  Alberta

2002
Support for the Advancement of Scholarship Grant, University of  Alberta

2000-2001
SSHRC Junior Faculty Development Grant, University of  Alberta

Undergraduate Courses

Concordia University

• ARTH 370 Studies in Canadian Art
• ARTH 349 Studies in the History of Print: The Visual Culture of Advertising
  
• ARTH 390 Art and the Museum

Undergraduate Courses

University of Alberta

• ARTH 207 Survey of Early Canadian Artistic Traditions
• ARTH 257 Survey of 20th Century Canadian Art
• ARTH 249 Advertising and Visual Culture
• ARTH 400 Historiography and Methodology (topics included: Methods of Art History; Theories of Representation; Theories of Visual Culture)
• ARTH 411 Special Topics in the History of Art, Design and Visual Culture (topics included: The Exhibition as Narrative Form; Museum Contexts; Representation and Otherness; Aboriginal Art and the Museum Context)
• ARTH 449 Special Topics in Advertising and Visual Culture (topics included:  Advertising and Gender: 1950 to 1975; Advertising and the Formation of Youth Culture)
• ARTH 456 Special Topics in Art after 1945 (topics included: High and Low: Debates in Post-War Culture; Art, Artists and Institutions)
• ARTH 457 Special Topics in Canadian Art (topics included: The Many Narratives of 'Emily Carr'; Cultural Nationalism and Canadian Visual Culture in the 1960s and 70s)

Graduate Courses

Concordia University
ARTH 626D Nationhood and Identity in Canadian Art: The Writing of Canadian Art History
ARTH 626E Nationhood and Identity in Canadian Art: Art Institutions in Canada
ARTH 648 Aspects of Museums and Curatorial Studies: Women and Art Institutions

Thesis Supervision

PhD
DJ Fraser (in progress)
The Feminist Archive

Jessica Veevers (in progress)
New Ontological Materialisms and the Work of Yves Gaucher

Matt Thiessen (co-supervisor) - University of Alberta
Painting and Virtuality
Convocation: Fall 2010.

MA
Katrina Caruso (in progress)
Jean Sutherland Boggs and the National Gallery of Canada

Akycha Surette (in progress)
The One of a Kind Show

Lucile Pages MA
The Museum for African Art

Béatrice Cloutier-Trépanier, MA
Vernaculars of Leisure and Festive Aesthetics: On the Contemporary Art Museum as Social Host
Convocation: Fall 2014

Zofia Krivdova, MA 
Steeling the Gaze: Portraits by Aboriginal Artists
Convocation: Fall 2014

Roshi Mandeep Chadha, MA
Art as Cultural Diplomacy. Sanaugavut: Inuit Art from the Canadian Arctic
Convocation: Spring 2014

Jaime-Brett Sine, MA
Reshaping Tradition: Linking Aesthetics, Cosmology and Formline in Contemporary Northwest Coast First Nations Art
Convocation: Spring 2012

Megan Bertagnolli
Beyond the Museum as Muse: Collecting, Classifying, and Displaying Objects in Contemporary Artistic Practice
University of Alberta
Convocation: Fall 2011

Jingjing Zheng, MA
Picturing the Asian Diaspora in North America: A Study of Liu Hung, Jin-me Yoon and Nikki S. Lee
Convocation: Spring 2010
University of Alberta

Alison Campbell, MA
Instigating change: investigating the meaning(s) of religious objects in St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art
Convocation: Spring 2007
University of Alberta

Jessica Heninger, MA
The exhibition as memorial: Canada's travelling war art display, 1919-1934
Convocation: Spring 2005
University of Alberta

Susan Sax-Willock, MA
National potency: ritual and action code in United States Marine Corps recruiting posters from the Vietnam Era
Convocation: Spring 2004
University of Alberta

Current Research

Beyond the Gift Shop: The Work of Volunteer Women in North American Art Museums
This book manuscript examines the work of volunteer women in art museums in North America between 1940 and 1975.

Doing Settler-Colonial Art History: The View from Canada
Collaborative research project co-lead with Kristina Huneault (Concordia University) and Damian Skinner (Auckland Museums) examining the challenges of writing art history within a settler-colonial context. Edited collection. 

Edited Book

Whitelaw, Anne, Brian Foss and Sandra Paikowsky (eds). The Visual Arts in Canada: The Twentieth Century, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Book Chapters and Journal Essays

• "'If you do not grow you are a dead duck': Funding Art Publications in Canada 1940 to 1980," special issue on Networked Art Histories in Canada, ed. Johanne Sloan, Journal of Canadian Art History (forthcoming).
• "Writing National Art Histories in Canadian Museums." in Conal Mcarthy ed. Museum Practice: Critical Debates in the Contemporary Museum, volume 4 of International Handbook of Museum Studies, Oxford: Blackwell, 2015. 
• "From the Gift Shop to the Permanent Collection: Women and the Circulation of Inuit Art." In Janice Helland, Beverly Lemire and Alena Buis eds. Craft, Community and the Material Culture of Place and Politics, 19th-20th Century. Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2014, 105-123.
• "A New Pavilion of Quebec and Canadian Art at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts," Journal of Canadian Art History 34:1, 2013, 167-84.
• "Women, Museums and the Problem of Biography." In Kate Hill ed. Museums and Biographies: Stories, Objects, Identities. Woodbridge UK: Boydell and Brewer, 2012.
• "Professional/Volunteer: Women at the Edmonton Art Gallery, 1923-1970" in Kristina Huneault and Janice Anderson (eds.) Rethinking Professionalism: Essays on Women and Art in Canada, 1850-1970. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2012.
• "Art Institutions in the Twentieth Century: Framing Canadian Visual Culture" in Anne Whitelaw, Brian Foss and Sandra Paikowsky (eds) The Visual Arts in Canada: The Twentieth Century, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2010.
• "Aboriginalities and Nationalities: Shaping Art History in the Post-Colonial Museum" in Jaynie Anderson (ed.) Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration, Convergence, proceedings of the 32nd Congress of the Comité international de l'histoire de l'art (CIHA), Melbourne: University of Melbourne Press, 2009, 854-7. 
• "Theorizing in the Bush: Camping, Pedagogy, Tom Thomson, and Cultural Studies" Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, Special Double Issue on New Cultural Spaces: Cultural Studies in Canada Today (Imre Szeman and Richard Cavell eds) 29:3-4, 2007, 187-209. 
• "Placing Aboriginal Art at the National Gallery of Canada" Canadian Journal of Communications, special issue on Culture, Heritage and Art, 31:1, 2006, 197-214.
• "To Better Know Ourselves: J. Russell Harper's Painting in Canada: A History" Journal of Canadian Art History, 26:1-2, 2005, 8-33.
• "'Whiffs of Balsam, Pine and Spruce': Art Museums and the Negotiation of a 'Canadian' Aesthetic," in J. Berland and S. Hornstein (eds), Capital Culture: A Reader on Modernist Legacies, State Institutions and the Value(s) of Art, McGill-Queen's Univ. Press, 2000, 122-137. Reprinted in John O'Brian and Peter Whyte (eds) Beyond Wilderness: The Group of Seven, Canadian Identity and Contemporary Art. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007 and in Jonathan Finn ed. Visual Communication and Culture: Images in Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
• "Nationalism and Globalization: Exhibitions and the Circulation of Objects," International Journal of Canadian Studies 16, Fall 1997, 261-267.
• "Statistical Imperatives: Representing the Nation in Exhibitions of Contemporary Art," Topia: A Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 1:1, Spring 1997, 22-41.
• "Land Spirit Power: First Nations Cultural Production and Canadian Nationhood," International Journal of Canadian Studies, no. 12, Fall 1995, 31-49.

Exhibition Catalogues

• Seeing Through Modernism: Edmonton 1970-1985. Edmonton: Art Gallery of Alberta, 2008.
• "Clint Wilson" in Clint Wilson Field Work, Canada Council-funded catalogue, 2006.

Book

Spaces and Places for Art: Making Art Institutions in Western Canada, 1912-1990. Montreal and Kingston: McGill Queen's University Press, 2017.

Edited Collection

"Urgency and the Question of Cultural Studies" special double issue of the Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, co-edited with Julie Rak and Sharon Rosenberg. Vol. 31 no 2-3, May 2009.

Conferences & Lectures

Since 2005

2014

"Ladies without Attitude: Photographs of Women in Museums" Modernist Studies Association Conference, Pittsburgh PA, November 2014.

2012

• "Women as Art Brokers in Mid-Twentieth Century Canada" paper presented at the Canadian Women Artists History Initiative conference, Concordia University, 3-5 May 2012.
• "Locating Canadian Art" participant in "Ambas Americas: North and South Americas in Conversation" round table at College Art Association conference, Los Angeles, February 2012.

• "Brand NGC" paper presented at the Universities Art Association of Canada annual conference, National Gallery of Canada and Carleton University, 25-7 October 2011.
  
• "Collecting at the Art Gallery of Alberta" invited lecture to the Curator's Circle of the Art Gallery of Alberta, 2 October 2011.
• "'Please Send Pictures, Women Getting Impatient': The Circulation of Contemporary Canadian Art in the 1940s and 50s." Keynote speaker ARTHattack! Undergraduate Student Conference, the University of Guelph, 18 March 2011.
• "From the Gift Shop to the Permanent Collection: Art Gallery Women's Societies and the Circulation of Inuit Art," paper presented at the Material Culture, Craft & Community: Negotiating Objects Across Time & Place conference, University of Alberta, 20-21 May 2011.
• "'Please Send Pictures Women Getting Impatient': The Circulation of Contemporary Canadian Art in the 1940s and 50s" Adaskin Lecture in Canadian Art, University of Victoria, 21 January 2011.

• "The Legacy of Absence: Conceptual Art in Edmonton" paper to be presented at the Conceptual Art in Canada Conference, University of Toronto, 25-27 November, 2010.
• "'A Keen Propagandist for Canadian Art in the West': the National Gallery and Western Canadian art museums, 1920-1945" paper presented at the Universities Art Association of Canada Annual Conference, University of Guelph, 14-16 October, 2010.

• "Women, Museums and the Problem of Biography" paper presented at the Museums and Biographies conference (organized by the Museums and Galleries History Group), National Gallery (London), 11-12 September, 2009.

• "Women and Museums: Volunteers or Visionaries" paper presented at Connections, inaugural conference of the Canadian Women Artists History Initiative, Concordia University, Montreal, 2-4 October 2008.
• "Aboriginalities and Nationalities: Shaping Art History in the Post-Colonial Museum" paper presented at Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration, Convergence, 32nd Congress of the Comité international de l'histoire de l'art (CIHA), Melbourne AU, 13-17 January 2008.

• "The Limits of Inclusion in Canadian Art History" paper presented at the Universities Art Association of Canada Annual Conference, University of Waterloo, 1-3 November, 2007.

• "The Lively Arts: Cultural Programming and the CBC in the 1960s" paper presented at the Universities Art Association of Canada Annual Conference, NSCAD University, Halifax, 2-4 November 2006.

• "Keeping the Eye on Fashion: Collecting and Institutional Taste at the Edmonton Art Gallery" paper presented at the Universities Art Association of Canada Annual Conference, University of Victoria, 3-5 November 2005.
• "Rewriting National Narratives: the Galleries of Canadian and Aboriginal Art at the National Gallery of Canada" paper presented at the Small Countries, Big Neighbours Conference (British Association of Canadian Studies/New Zealand Studies Association), University of Kent at Canterbury, 11-14 April 2005.

Exhibitions

2008

• Seeing Through Modernism: The University of Alberta 1970-1985, Fine Arts Building Gallery, University of Alberta, May 11 to 31, 2008.
• Seeing Through Modernism: Edmonton 1970-1985, Art Gallery of Alberta and the FAB Gallery, University of Alberta, March 1 to May 11, 2008.
  

• Building a Collection: 80 Years at the Edmonton Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Alberta, January 21 to April 2, 2006 (no catalogue).

Professional Service Outside the University:

President, Universities Art Association of Canada, 2013-2016
Vice President, Universities Art Association of Canada, 2010-2013

Editorial Board Member:
The Journal of Canadian Art History
Topia: A Journal of Canadian Cultural Studies
The Brock Review


Conferences Organized:
Universities Art Association of Canada Annual Conference, Fall 2012 (Concordia University)
Universities Art Association of Canada Annual Conference, Fall 2010 (University of Alberta)
Canadian Association of Cultural Studies Conference, Fall 2008 (University of Alberta)
Canadian Association of Cultural Studies Conference, Fall 2006 (University of Alberta)