Alicia Boutilier

Alicia Boutilier (born 1968) is the Chief Curator and Curator of Canadian Historical Art at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston. She has been Curator of Canadian Historical Art since 2008 and was appointed Chief Curator in 2017. In 2020, she served as the Interim Director at the gallery and received a special recognition award from Queen's University at Kingston for her work as a team leader, adapting to the new realities caused by Covid. She is a Canadian art historian with wide-ranging concerns with emphasis on women artists, artistic groups, regional scenes and collecting histories.

Career Boutilier was born in Welland and grew up in Niagara Falls, Ontario. She received her Honours BA in English, University of Ottawa (1990); her MA in English, Dalhousie University, Halifax (1992); then did a qualifying year in Art History at Carleton University, Ottawa (1995/1996) and received her MA in Canadian Art History from Carleton University, Ottawa (1998). In 2015, she co-curated The Artist Herself: Self-Portraits by Canadian Historical Women Artists (2015) with Tobi Bruce of the Art Gallery of Hamilton, concentrating on what art and craft offered the genre's definition of self-representation. Her 2021 exhibition Tom Thomson: The Art of Authentication, co-curated and authored again with Bruce, established criteria to authenticate a work of art, taking as its focus the work of Tom Thomson.

Boutilier has written entries to the catalogues of such exhibitions as Uninvited, Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Movement, McMichael Canadian Art Collection (2021) as well as writing numerous essays in publications and journals such as "Road Trip Across Canada with Alan C. Collier" which was related to her show of the same name (2017). Since 2009, she has supervised M.A. and Ph.D. theses in the area of Canadian art at Queen's University, Kingston and since 2019, she has served as an adjunct professor in its department of Art History and Conservation. She also has served on many committees, notably for the city of Kingston, and was a Founding member of the Curators of Canadian Historical Art (COCHA), in 2009 and has remained on it till the present.

Awards Research Fellowship in Canadian Historical Art, National Gallery of Canada (2004). Curatorial Writing Award for Major Essay (A Vital Force: The First Twenty Years), Ontario Association of Art Galleries (OAAG) (2013). Certificate of Achievement, Foundational Leadership Program, Queen's University, 2019. Special Recognition for Staff Awards 2020 from Queen's University, Kingston, 2020.