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Awards

The Universities Art Association recognizes excellence through the honours and awards programs which also serve to acknowledge the work of its members.

Members can submit nominations using the online form. Nominations are received and reviewed by the Board of Directors and winners will be presented at the UAAC-AAUC annual conference each fall:

Award Eligibility and Process

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Graduate Student Essay Award

Graduate students who presented papers at the current annual UAAC-AAUC conference can submit complete versions of their essays, in English or French, for consideration by the UAAC-AAUC Board for the Annual Graduate Student Essay Award. The winning essay will be awarded a $250 prize and will be published in the subsequent spring issue of RACAR.

Year Recipient Essay
2022 Georgia Phillips-Amos A Threatening Presence: Regina José Galindo’s Aparición
2021 Erika Kindsfather From Activism to Artistic Practice: (Re)imagining Indigenous Women’s Labour Activism in Contemporary Art
2020 Marie Ferron-Desautels Satire et sociabilité au cœur de la pratique caricaturale de Lady Dalhousie (1786–1839) : vers une histoire des femmes caricaturistes britanniques
2019 Sarah Carter India and the Antiquarian Image: Richard Payne Knight’s A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus
2018 Caitlin E. Ryan Eli Lotar and Jacques-André Boiffard aboard the Exir Dallen
2017 Vanessa Bateman Ursus Horribilis: Seth Kinman’s Grizzly Chair at the World’s Columbian Exposition
2016 Elysia H. French Transformations of Oil: Visibility, Scale, and Climate in Warren Cariou’s Petrography
2015 Elizabeth Anne Cavaliere Onward! Canadian Expansionist Outlooks and the Photographs that Serve Them
2014 Kathryn Desplanque Repeat Offenders: Reprinting Visual Satire Across France’s Long Eighteenth Century
2013 Jennifer Orpana Turning the World Inside Out: Situating JR’s Wish within Cultures of Participation
2012 Erin McLeod By a Wing and a Tale: Authenticating the Archive in Mohamad Said Baalbaki’s Al Buraq | The Prophet’s Human-Headed Mount

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Recognition Award

Established in 2010, the UAAC-AAUC Recognition Award acknowledges members who have demonstrated their unselfish and devoted service to our association and their commitment to our profession’s ideals. These individuals have shown leadership and have made significant contributions to the organization. To honour the UAAC-AAUC conference’s 50th anniversary in 2017, the board decided that, henceforth, a lifetime membership in the association will accompany this award.

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2022 UAAC-AAUC Recognition Award: Dr. Joan Coutu

It is an honour to present the UAAC Recognition Award to long-time UAAC member Dr. Joan Coutu, from the University of Waterloo.

Joan Coutu’s research concentrates on the built environment at the bookends of the British Empire: in eighteenth-century Britain and its colonies, and in Canada in the early Commonwealth era. Her focus is on monuments, buildings, sculpture, and park design, and their relationship with politics, time, and identity. She has published extensively on eighteenth-century British visual culture, notably Then and Now: Collecting and Classicism in Eighteenth-century England (2015) and Persuasion and Propaganda: Monuments and the Eighteenth-century British Empire (2006), and co-edited (with Jon Stobart and Peter Lindfield), Politics and the English Country House, 1688-1800 (2023), al published by McGill-Queen’s University Press. She is currently editing (with David Galbraith), Utopia and Hubris: Classicism in Canada, c. 1900-1950. Joan teaches Visual Culture and Art History courses in Fine Arts and is the former co-ordinator of the interdisciplinary program in Visual Culture (1996-2022), based in Fine Arts. She also organizes and teaches several course trips – to Rome, Venice, England, Berlin, etc. – and is actively involved in the MFA program as a co-supervisor. Originally from Toronto, Joan graduated with a B.A. from the University of Toronto, a M.A. from Queen’s University, Kingston, and a PhD from University College, London (England), all in the History of Art. She joined the Department of Fine Arts in 1996.

Year Recipient
2022 Joan Coutu
2021 Anne Whitelaw
2020 Martha Langford
2019 Annie Gérin
2018 Lynda Jessup and Sally Hickson
2017 Lora Senechal Carney
2016 Nicole Dubreuil
2015 Joyce Zemans
2014 David McTavish
2013 Brian Foss
2012 Barbara Winters
2011 Mary and Alan Hughes
2010 Catherine Harding and Allister Neher

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Lifetime Achievement Award

The UAAC-AAUC Lifetime Achievement Award is presented to a past or present member of UAAC who has made an outstanding contribution to the profession over the whole of a career either through leadership, creation, education, curatorial projects, service, or publications.

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2022 UAAC-AAUC Lifetime Achievement Award: Dr. Ruth Phillips

The 2022 UAAC Lifetime Achievement Award has been presented to Dr. Ruth Phillips. Learn more about Ruth.

The UAAC Lifetime Achievement Award is presented to a senior scholar who has made an outstanding contribution to the profession over the whole of a career either through leadership, creation, education, curatorial projects, service or publications. In the case of my colleague Ruth Phillips, it is not “either/or” but “all/and”. Ruth has been a leader in educational initiatives, curatorial projects, service and publications.
To list just a few more of Ruth’s accomplishments: she was President of the Comité international de l’histoire de l’art (CIHA) from 2004 to 2008; she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2007; and in 2021 she was awarded a Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts Medal. In addition to these awards, Ruth has also held visiting professorships at Harvard, Cambridge, the Australian National University, and Yale. And she has served as advisor or consultant to many institutions, including the Acquisitions Committee of the National Gallery of Canada; the Canadian History Hall project at the Canadian Museum of History; the Canadian Curatorial Committee at the AGO; and the Anishnaabe committee at the National Museum of the American Indian.

There’s so much more to say about Ruth’s career, including her curatorial work, her membership on a host of journal advisory boards, her projects on other modernisms, but I would like to conclude on a more personal note. I got to know Ruth and her husband, historian Mark Phillips, when they returned to Carleton in 2003. I had just started working at Carleton, and Ruth was (and still is) a model and mentor to me. I have admired her insightful and careful comments in departmental meetings, her patience with her students, her contagious curiosity, and her incredible work ethic. Yet with all her industriousness, what has always impressed me most about Ruth is simply her sense of humanity, specifically how she always treats others with great respect and how dedicated she is to take care of those around her.

Year Recipient
2022 Ruth Phillips
2021 Sherry Farrell-Racette
2020 John O’Brian
2019 Sandra Alfoldy

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Award for the advancement of equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility

The UAAC-AAUC Award (established in 2022) for the Advancement of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility is intended to recognize and celebrate the achievements of those whose work in our fields foster change and build an equitable, diverse, inclusive, and accessible community in Canada. The outputs of such work may look like many things, such as: building a more inclusive, equitable, diverse, and accessible practices and working environments; increasing diverse representation; promoting research and insights relating to Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity and Accessibility; leadership and engagement in addressing systemic inequality.

UAAC-AAUC Award for the advancement of equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility, recognizes and celebrates the achievements of those whose work in our fields foster change and build an equitable, diverse, inclusive, and accessible community in Canada.
Eligibility: This award recognizes and celebrates the achievements of those whose work in our fields, foster change and build an equitable, diverse, inclusive, and accessible community in Canada.

UAAC member at any career stage with a demonstrated contribution to: 

  • building a more inclusive, equitable, diverse, and accessible practice / working environment
  • increasing diverse representation
  • promoting research and insights relating to Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity and Accessibility
  • leadership and engagement in addressing systemic inequality

Prize: UAAC Life Membership + $1000 prize + 1 year of RACAR

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The inaugural recipient is Dr. Alice Ming Wai Jim, Professor of Contemporary Art in the Department of Art History at Concordia University in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal, and the Concordia University Research Chair in Ethnocultural Art Histories (2017-2022). An art historian and curator, her research on diasporic art in Canada and contemporary Asian art has generated new dialogues within and between ethnocultural and global art histories, critical race theory, media arts, and curatorial studies. Focusing primarily on contemporary Asian Canadian and Black Canadian artists, Jim has curated exhibitions of over sixty artists of colour and Indigenous artists and organized major scholarly events within academic settings and for the broader arts community in Canada and internationally. She has also been involved in a leadership capacity in several formal partnerships involving international networking and community building initiatives, with a strong commitment to research and social justice. Learn more about Dr. Jim.

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✍️Book Prize *NEW in 2023*

The UAAC-AAUC Book Award (established 2023) is intended to recognize and celebrate the scholarly achievements of our members. Monographs, edited anthologies, and exhibition catalogues published in English or French between January 1 and December 31 prior to the award year, are eligible. (For the 2023 award, books must have been published in 2022). Works published posthumously are ineligible.

Nominations must be submitted via our online form listing the nominator, title of the work, author, press, year, and nominee’s contact information. Authors or presses will be responsible for providing 3 copies (paper or digital) to the awards jury. 

Eligibility: The prize is open to 

  • Monographs, edited anthologies, and exhibition catalogues
  • published in English or French between January 1 and December 31 prior to the award year
  • regardless of subject-matter, written by a UAAC member in good standing who is employed or studying at a Canadian institution; 
  • or any book on a Canadian topic (broadly conceived) by a UAAC member in good standing who is not at a Canadian institution. 

 Prize: 1-year UAAC Membership + 1-year subscription to RACAR

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