Lisa Slade is the Hugh Ramsay Chair in Australian Art History in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne.

As both a curator and art historian, Lisa has played an active role and has a critical interest in how exhibition making and collection development make Australia's art histories. Between 2015 and 2024 she was Assistant Director, Artistic Programs at the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) where Lisa led the gallery's creative output including exhibitions, collection displays, public and educational programs. Together with the AGSA team, she implemented the curatorial signature at AGSA that brings discrete and pervading art histories into dialogue with contemporary art and ideas, including the vital leadership of First Nations' voices.

Lisa has curated major exhibitions including Vincent Namatjira: Australia in colour, the 2019 Venice Biennale presentation of James Darling and Lesley Forwood's Living rocks: a fragment of the universe, the 14th Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Magic Object, the national touring exhibitions Quilty, and the Tarnanthi: Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art's Kungka Kupu (Strong Women) in 2022-2024.

Lisa's numerous publications include the 2016 exhibition catalogue Sappers & Shrapnel: contemporary art and the art of the trenches. This project is the focus of a chapter authored by Slade in the 2023 Bloomsbury publication, The Politics of Artists in War Zones. She has contributed lead essays to monographs on the work of contemporary Australian artists including Olga Cironis, Tamara Dean, Nicholas Folland, Tom Moore, Vincent Namatjira, Ben Quilty, Julia Robinson and Caroline Rothwell. Lisa's time in the central south' meridian, connected to the arid and desert regions of South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, has driven the articulation of new art histories through publications and exhibitions, most recently with An Anangu western' in the Iwantja book published by Thames & Hudson in 2023.

Initiated when working with Newcastle Art Gallery's colonial art collection, Lisa's PhD research explored the material and conceptual forms of curiosity during the period of Lachlan Macquarie's governorship of New South Wales (1810-1821). Through this object-oriented approach, she explored the rarely examined collaborations between Aboriginal people, colonisers and convicts in the Hunter region, and traced the afterlife of curiosity, often applying the Wunderkammer as a lens in contemporary art and exhibition making.

Until 2024 Lisa was Chair of The National Cultural Heritage Committee (NCHC) and between 2014 and 2019 she served as the Chair of Artlink Australia. She is a national advocate for artists and art history with decades of experience as a keynote speaker, broadcaster, mentor and educator.

The Hugh Ramsay Chair was created in 2016 by a visionary endowment from Faculty of Arts alumna Patricia Fullerton, the grand-niece of the famous Australian artist Hugh Ramsay (1877-1906) to play a critical leadership role in linking the academic program to the wider arts community, and in fostering public engagement. Lisa was appointed in 2024, following the inaugural Chair Professor Ian McLean.

Prof

Lisa Slade

Hugh Ramsay Chair of Australian Art History

School of Culture and Communication

Prof

Lisa Slade

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Faculty of Arts

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Australian Art History

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Lisa Slade

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