Associate Professor Claire Roberts

Associate Prof Claire Roberts

Claire Roberts is an art historian and a curator specialising in modern and contemporary Chinese art and cultural flows between Australia and Asia. She is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Melbourne and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA). Claire has published widely on Chinese art and visual and material culture and curated numerous exhibitions. He most recent books are Ian Fairweather: A Life in Letters (edited with John Thompson, 2019), Photography and China (2013) and Friendship in Art: Fou Lei and Huang Binhong (2010).

Her current Australian Research Council Future Fellowship research project ‘Reconfiguring the World. China. Art. Agency 1900s to Now’ focuses on the international context of modern and contemporary Chinese art. Claire is fluent in Mandarin, studying at the Beijing Languages Institute (1978-79) and the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (1979-81). She gained her Master of Arts from the University of Melbourne (1987) and her PhD from the Australian National University (2006). She was Curator at the Museum of Chinese-Australian History, Melbourne (1986-88) and Senior Curator of Asian Decorative Arts and Design at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney (1988-2010). She was a Research Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University (2009-10) and Senior Lecturer in Art History, University of Adelaide (2012-2014).