fellowships

In 2020 the Art Canada Institute set out to create a more inclusive art history and to celebrate the contributions to art in this country made by those who have 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 to recognize the work of individuals doing pioneering research on artists who have not had a place in art history.

We are pleased to introduce some of our fellowship recipients and share their important work.

The cultural contributions of the English-born Canadian photographer Violet Keene Perinchief (1893–1987) have not been widely studied, except in relation to the work of her mother, renowned photographer Minna Keene (1861–1943). An accomplished portrait photographer in her own right, Violet Keene managed two busy Toronto studios in the 1930s and 1940s, a time when women rarely had careers as professional artists. Her portraits capture a range of subjects, including families, debutantes, brides, and prominent historical figures like aviator Amelia Earhart and writer Aldous Huxley. Dr. Jennifer Orpana will explore how the artist played a formidable role in the history of photography in Toronto by examining Keene’s vast portfolio and considering how her work reflects varied ideas of femininity that manifested privately and publicly during the interwar period. Dr. Orpana’s research will look at what Keene’s images—and her career—can reveal about the changing, nuanced roles of women as consumers, professionals, photographic subjects, and artists in Canada during that time. Dr. Orpana is a photography historian and lecturer who has taught at Toronto Metropolitan University, University of Toronto, OCAD University, Western University, and Brock University.

Contact Jennifer: jorpana@aci-iac.ca

Where do you draw the line between censorship and freedom of expression? Representation and exploitation? Art and pornography? In 1990, the pioneering Vancouver-based artist collective Kiss & Tell raised these provocative questions with Drawing the Line, its genre-defining and groundbreaking photographic exhibition about lesbian sexuality. With their radical images of women engaged in various erotic practices, from kissing to bondage to voyeurism, the collective—consisting of members Persimmon Blackbridge, Lizard Jones, and Susan Stewart—not only drew attention to the lack of lesbian representation in Canadian art, but also used visual culture to address hotly debated questions within the queer community. Kristen Hutchinson’s research examines how Kiss & Tell created artworks and spaces that allowed women to see themselves represented in art through a queer female gaze. They received their PhD in the History of Art from University College London in 2007.

Read more in Kiss & Tell: Lesbian Art & Activism by Kristen Hutchinson (published June 2025).