Rebecca Taylor Duclos returns to Montreal from the United States, where she was dean of Graduate Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. | Photo by David Ross
“Rebecca is part of our family and I am honoured to welcome her back to Concordia in a key leadership role,” says Benoit-Antoine Bacon, provost and vice-president of Academic Affairs.
“Her international experience and demonstrated leadership abilities, as well as her collegial approach based on community building, made her the perfect candidate.”
Duclos was dean of Graduate Studies at the renowned School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she also had an appointment as professor of Visual and Critical Studies.
She previously held the role of graduate program director and faculty member at the Maine College of Art. Earlier in her career, Duclos served as professor, research fellow, visiting faculty and part-time faculty at a number of institutions, including the University of Manchester, McGill University, Deakin University and Concordia.
Duclos holds a PhD in Art History and Visual Studies from the University of Manchester, and a Master of Museum Studies from the University of Toronto.
“I look forward to returning to Concordia, to meeting faculty and students from across the school, and to promoting the exceptional work and research emerging from the Faculty of Fine Arts,” she says.
"It will be a privilege to support the production, performance, scholarship and community-based activity that flourishes here, and to continue making a place for this work to be known locally, nationally and internationally. Concordia has extraordinary resources, Montreal is an exceptional city, and the Faculty is thriving. I am thrilled and honoured to be part of this moment.”
In addition to her academic and administrative accomplishments, Duclos has experienced marked success in the cultural sector. She was coordinator of public programs and visiting artists for the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, manager of special projects and volunteer services for the Design Exchange, curator of education for the Textile Museum of Canada, and founding curator and academic consultant on the Alchemy Artists research-residency project with The Manchester Museum.
As a writer and art curator, Duclos has completed a number of projects, including The Manchester Letherium at Cornerhouse; As much as possible in the time and space allotted at the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery; Voir/Noir at the Musée d'art de Joliette; Magnify at the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art; Telepathic Drawing Session at Articule; and In this lack of containment lies a danger but also a power... at Centres des arts actuels Skol.
Duclos has published extensively in scholarly and professional journals, and while her future work will focus on the aesthetics of adjacency, her ongoing research project “The Compulsive Browse” centres on the many para-academic research methods employed by artists, designers and curators in the preparation of their projects.
Her research has been funded by agencies including the Canadian Council for the Arts, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the American Association of University Women, Arts Council England and the Getty Research Institute.
Search Committee
As chair of the search committee, Benoit-Antoine Bacon extends his sincere appreciation to the committee members — Ingrid Bachman, Beatriz Bartolome, David Douglas, Cynthia Hammond, Emmet Henchey, Suzanne Sauvage, Mark J. Sussman, Haidee Wasson and Ned Zimmerman — for their collegial attitude and sound advice in identifying Duclos’ exceptional fit for the position of dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts.