Elizabeth Rankin

Elizabeth Anne Rankin is a South African–New Zealand art history academic, and is an emeritus professor at the University of Auckland, specialising in neglected South African artists, and printmaking and sculpture.

Academic career

Rankin completed a PhD titled Englishmen on the Acropolis: an historiography of the Parthenon, c. 1750-1850 at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1978. It was the first PhD in art history awarded by the university. Rankin was appointed as Chair of the History of Art at Witwatersrand in 1982, and later served three years as Dean of Arts.

Rankin joined the faculty of the University of Auckland in 1998 as professor of art history. She was head of the department, and chair of the exhibitions committee for the university's Gus Fisher Gallery. Rankin published a history of Rorke's Drift printmakers with Philippa Hobbs in 2003. Rankin and Hobbs have written a biography of South African artist Peter Clarke, published in 2011, along with retrospective exhibitions at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town, and in Johannesburg. Rankin has also written about New Zealand photographers Fiona Pardington, and Neil Pardington. Together they published From Memory to Marble: The Historical Frieze of the Voortrekker Monument in 2020.Rankin retired in 2016 and was appointed Professor Emerita at Auckland.

Selected works

Books

Other works