Griselda Pollock, a Canadian and British art historian known for pioneering feminist study in the discipline, won the Holberg Prize, one of the largest international awards given to scholars in the humanities, social sciences, law or theology.
The prize committee, in a citation, called Ms. Pollock “the foremost feminist art historian working today.” “Since the 1970s, Pollock has been teaching and publishing in a field in which she is not only a renowned authority, but which she helped create,” the committee wrote. The panel also noted her contributions to the field of film studies and cultural history broadly.
The Holberg Prize, first awarded in 2004, comes with an award of 6 million Norwegian kroner, or about $650,000, and is given every year to a researcher who has made outstanding contributions in fields in the humanities, social sciences, law or theology. The prize is funded by the Norwegian government. Past winners include Paul Gilroy, Cass Sunstein and Onora O’Neill.
Ms. Pollock is a professor at the University of Leeds. She has published 22 monographs, with four more forthcoming. Her 1981 book, “Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology,” co-authored with Rozsika Parker, was a radical critique of the discipline of art history and its canon. It has become a classic text in feminist art history, as has her 1988 book, “Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and Histories of Art.”
“I have spent 40 years creating new concepts with which to challenge art history’s white patriarchal structure to produce ways of thinking about art,” Ms. Pollock said in a statement, “its images, its practices, its effects that are not about admiration of selective greatness.”
Gender is only one of many lenses through which she has sought to reframe art historical study. In 2001 she founded the Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History, a transdisciplinary project connecting the study of art history with gender, class, sexuality, post-colonial and queer theory. “I analyze and resist the injuries of class, race, gender, sexuality as they are inflicted through images and cultural forms such as media, cinema, art, literature and academic thought,” she said.
Hazel Genn, the Holberg Committee chairwoman, said Ms. Pollock has been “a beacon for generations of art and cultural historians.”
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
