Bill Anthes
Professor of Art
On Sabbatical Spring 2024
With Pitzer Since: 2006
Field Group: Art
Campus Address: Avery 222
Phone: 909.607.3176
Email: [email protected]
Office Hours: See Faculty Directory
Bill Anthes teaches courses that support that the Art major’s tracks in Critical Studies and Studio Art. Non-majors and those who curious about art and art history are also welcome. Recent courses include:
- Art of the United States
- Perspectives on Contemporary Art
- When is Contemporary Art?
- Art and Animals
- First Year Seminars: Art in an Age of Protest, Writing About Art, Writing About Animals
- Senior Seminar in Art (for students in the Critical Studies and Studio Art tracks).
Professor Anthes is available as an advisor for Art (Critical Studies and Studio Art), and American Studies.
His research projects and published have focused on Indigenous North American modern and contemporary artists; socially-engaged and activist art; animals in art; and photography. He is a frequent collaborator with the Pitzer College Art Galleries and organized, Native Hosts, the public art installation by the artist Edgar Heap of Birds on the Pitzer campus. You can read more about Professor Anthes’ research here.
Education
PhD, American Studies, University of Minnesota
MA, Art History, University of Colorado, Boulder
BFA, Art History, University of Colorado, Boulder
Books
Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe, co-edited with Kathleen Ash-Milby. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution National Museum of the American, 2022.
Edgar Heap of Birds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015.
Reframing Photography: Theory and Practice. With Rebekah Modrak. London: Routledge, 2010.
Native Moderns: American Indian Painting, 1940-1960. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.
Selected Recent Essays
“Our Cats, Ourselves,” in Candice Lin, Natural History: A Half-Eaten Portrait, an Unrecognizable Landscape, a Still, Still Life (Claremont: Pitzer College Art Galleries, 2022).
“Očhéthi Šakówiŋ Tradition and Multiple Modernisms,” in Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe, Bill Anthes and Kathleen Ash-Milby, eds. (Smithsonian Institution National Museum of the American Indian and University of Oklahoma Press, 2022).
“Making Pictures on Baskets: Modern Indian Painting in an Expanded Field,” in Mapping Modernisms: Art, Indigeneity Colonialism, Elizabeth Harney and Ruth Phillips, eds. (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2018).
“On Settler Knowledge and Indigenous Political Ecology,” in Edgar Heap of Birds: Defend Sacred Mountains, Bill Anthes and Ciara Ennis, eds. (Claremont: Pitzer College Art Galleries, 2018),
“Activating ‘The Difference Which Makes a Difference’: Juan Downey’s Decolonial Field,” in Robert Crouch and Ciara Ennis, eds., Juan Downey: Radiant Nature (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and Pitzer College Art Galleries, 2017).
“2017: Indigenous Futures,” editors’ introduction with Kate Morris, for special volume, “Contemporary Native North American Art.” Contributions from Kathleen Ash-Milby, Ruth B. Phillips, Candice Hopkins, Jessica Horton, Kate Morris, Jolene Rickard, Dylan Robinson, Heather Igloliorte, Sherry Farrell-Racette, and Marie Watt, with an artist’s project by Postcommodity, Art Journal, v. 76, n. 1 (Summer 2017).
“Socially Engaged Art, Photography, and Art History,” in Activating Democracy: The “I Wish to Say” Project, Sheryl Oring, ed. (Bristol, UK: Intellect Books, 2016).
“Tarrah Krajnak: Strays,” Exposure, v. 47, n. 1 (Spring 2014).
“Marisol’s Indians,” in Marisol: Sculptures and Works on Paper, 1955-1998, Marina Pacini, ed. (Memphis: Brooks Museum of Art and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).
“‘Why Injun Artist Me’: Acee Blue Eagle’s Diasporic Performative,” in Native Diasporas: Indigenous Identities and Settler Colonialism in the Americas, Gregory D. Smithers and Brooke N. Newman, eds. (University of Nebraska Press, 2014)
“Ethics in a World of Strange Strangers: Edgar Heap of Birds at Home and Abroad,” Art Journal, v. 71, n. 3 (Fall 2012)
Selected Grants, Awards and Honors
Editorial Board Member, American Indian Quarterly (2015-present).
Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant (2009).
Arnold S. Graves and Lois S. Graves Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in Teaching in the Humanities, Pomona College/The American Council of Learned Societies (2008).
Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship, “Theorizing Cultural Heritage,” Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (2007).
Visiting Scholar, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center, Santa Fe, New Mexico (2003-2004).
