Many congratulations to AHVA PhD candidate Alison Ariss, recipient of a research fellowship with the Art Canada Institute as part of their inaugural Redefining Canadian Art History Fellowship Program https://www.aci-iac.ca/about-our-fellowships/
Following the seismic events of the summer of 2020, the Art Canada Institute reassessed our programming and what represented this nation’s art canon. The Art Canada Institute set out to create a more inclusive art history, and to celebrate contributions to art in this country made by those who had been overlooked due to their gender, race, or cultural background.
Guided by an extraordinary group of academic and museum leaders, ACI created the Redefining Canadian Art History Fellowship Program. Over the next five years, this initiative will insert twenty-five artists into this country’s canon of art history by awarding five grants of $30,000 to five scholars each June.
I am grateful to be one of the five inaugural ACI Fellowship holders. My project is focused on the resurgence of Coast Salish weaving in the 1960s as understood through the stories of four innovative Indigenous women—Mary Peters, Martha James, Adeline Lorenzetto and Anabel Stewart—and through materials in museums, archives, and private collections. I aim to ensure their artworks are attributed and made visible, and to bring greater awareness to the values threaded into Salish weavings and their currently underrepresented roles in the history of art in Canada.
Alison Ariss
