Ruth Phillips

Phillips received her doctorate in African art history in 1979 from the University of London at the School of Oriental and African Studies.^[1] Her dissertation focused on masquerade performance by Mende women in Sierra Leone.^[2] She became a professor at Carleton University in 1979.^[1] In 1997, Phillips became a Director of the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, where she, alongside three First Nations partner communities and museum staff, created a successful expansion and renewal plan for a $41 million grant to the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the British Columbia Knowledge Foundation, and the University of British Columbia.^[1]

In 2005, Phillips, Heidi Bohaker, First Nations partners, and many other scholars co-founded the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts & Cultures (GRASAC).^[3] Phillips organized many grants, and supervised the team of GRASAC research assistants in her time as the director.^[3] Phillips holds the Canada Research Chair in Modern Culture at Carleton University.^[4]

• Berlo, Janet Catherine; Phillips, Ruth B. (1998). Native North American Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-284266-8. (with a second edition in 2015, ISBN 978-0-19-284218-3)
• Phillips, Ruth B. (1995). Representing Woman: Sande Society Masks of the Mende of Sierra Leone. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. ISBN 9780930741440. OCLC 32921792.
• Phillips, Ruth B. (1998). Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native North American Art from the Northeast, 1700–1900. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN 0773518061.
• Phillips, Ruth B.; Steiner, Christopher B., eds. (1999). Unpacking Culture: Arts and Commodities in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520207963.
• Edwards, Elizabeth; Gosden, Chris; Phillips, Ruth B., eds. (2006). Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Museums and Material Culture. Berg. ISBN 9781845203245.
• Phillips, Ruth B. (2011). Museum Pieces: Toward the Indigenization of Canadian Museums. McGill-Queen's/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History. Vol. 7. McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 9780773539051.
• Coombes, Annie E.; Phillips, Ruth B., eds. (2015). Museum Transformations. The International Handbooks of Museum Studies. Vol. 4. Wiley Blackwell.
• Coombes, Annie E.; Phillips, Ruth B., eds. (2020). Museum Transformations: Decolonization and Democratization. Wiley Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-119-64204-6.