Ruth Burns holds a M.A. in Art History from McGill University where her focus was on contemporary Canadian art and critical race studies with an emphasis on "whiteness”. She was an active member of an independent curatorial team, the Upgrade in Montreal and a co-founder, President and Senior Editor of Locus Suspectus Magazine, an interdisciplinary arts journal, which now finds its home in Edmonton.

Burns teaches Contemporary Art Issues at Grant MacEwan and is the Curatorial Coordinator at the Art Gallery of Alberta.

Her presentation will focus on Leaving Olympia, an exhibition she is currently curating for the Art Gallery of Alberta in 2009.

“One of Western art’s most enduring subject matters, the tradition of the nude has been radically rethought since the advent of the Modern era. In the context of these innovations, the exhibition Leaving Olympia addresses a continued engagement with an idealized understanding of the nude and the re-envisioning of this history.” Ruth Burns

The MacEwan Visiting Artist Lecture Series is supported by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

http://www.macewan.ca/web/pvca/fineart/home/DetailsPage.cfm?ID=1598