Ruth Phillips‘ research focuses on critical museology and the Aboriginal arts of North America. She is currently completing a book which examines visual culture as a site of cross-cultural translation in the Great Lakes region which includes an examination of Norval Morrisseau’s  invention of modern Anishinaabe painting during the 1950s. Interested in parallels with other modern arts that developed in Africa, North America and the Pacific during the twentieth century, she organized a workshop at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts that brought together specialists in these arts. The current project developed out of those discussions. Phillips is now extending her research to 20th century Aboriginal modernisms in other regions of Canada.