Dr. Gerard Curtis, BFA, BA (University of Calgary), PhD (University of Essex)
Professor - Visual Arts
Phone: (709) 639-2511
Email: gcurtis@grenfell.mun.ca
Social Media/LinkedIn: Instagram: mudlarkingart
Research interests/expertise
Gerard has published a number of articles and book reviews on 19th and 20th century art, literary culture and maritime art, and a book on word/image studies (Visual Words, Ashgate/Routledge). His studio-art interests are in traditional and inter-media/time-based work, video, film, duratrans images, performance art (including coordinating a series of guerilla raves), durational performance art, and a long-term project called The Fragmentary Museum; he has been an artist/writer in residence in Dawson City (KIAC Yukon) and has exhibited work in both the UK and in Canada.
Teaching
Visual Culture and Art History. Gerard has presented a number of conference papers on transformational, transgressive, cooperative, and alternative teaching/mentoring approaches, developing one of the first courses in Canada on Anarchism and art. He initiated the use of art/o/graphy and studio-based projects in art history courses, and has also developed a highly successful 12-week overseas immersion study program in England for Visual Arts students that is offered at Memorial's Harlow Campus in the UK. In 2009 he was awarded Memorial University President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.
Representative scholarly contributions
Articles (2020-2017) and Books
- “Full-Tilt: West Coast Art” in Future Possible (ed. Mireille Eagan),The Rooms, 2020.
- “Tradition and the contemporary collide: Newfoundland and Labrador art-education history / Le choc de la tradition et du contemporain : histoire de l’éducation artistique à Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador” With Dr. Heather McLeod. Canadian Review of Art Education, Vol 46, no. 1 (2019).
- Whitaker, Robin and Curtis Gerard. “Fossil fuel divestment and post-oil dependent Newfoundland and Labrador” in Neiss, Barbara (Ed.), Asking the Big Questions, Royal Society Atlantic Report, March 2017.
- “The Case for Fossil Fuel Divestment” with Robin Whitaker in The Independent, April 26, 2015. http://theindependent.ca/2015/04/26/the-case-for-fossil-fuel-divestment/
Books
- Visual Words: Art and the Material Book in Victorian England, (2002). Ashgate/Lund Humphries Publishers, London, England
Current research projects and grants
Gerard is currently engaged in a funded book-length study on issues in maritime and environmental art, and is researching the impact of censorship on art. He has presented a number of papers on issues ranging from transformative educational practices, drawing history, and Pre-Raphaelite art, to the post-modern sublime, maritime/environmental art, and the role of the stutter and chrono-photography in art, while also working on creative arts projects that conflate visual culture and visual arts practice, along with community–based artworks.
Awards and recognitions
2009 – Memorial University President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, and in 2012 a Canadian Association of University Teachers Service Award.
Memberships and affiliations
Gerard is a union, social and environmental activist, and he has presented workshops for the NL Federation of Labour and the Canadian Labour Congress on creative activism. He was co-lead with Robin Whitaker on the successful divestment initiative for MUNFA at Memorial University.
Honours, graduate and post-graduate supervision
Graduate supervision and course instructor for MFA, MA (Environmental Studies) and PhD (Environmental Studies) graduate students.