Philippa Hobbs

Philippa Hobbs is a South African art historian, artist, and art collector. She was born in 1955 Hobbs was a professor of art at the Technikon Witwatersrand from 1979 to 1993, and also the Head of Printmaking there. She has been noted for her contribution to the practice of art (with national and international exhibitions), art education, research, and community development through art. As of 2006, Hobbs has worked as Curator of the MTN Art Collection, a private, corporate art collection in Johannesburg.

Art Hobbs was invited to contribute to the Images of Human Rights project in 1996, which involved artists making visual representation of each clause of South Africa's Bill of Rights. Hobbs' designated clause was Clause 8: Freedom of Expression, where her woodcut – Received by the Tongue – shows the precarious balance between rights of expression and the subsequent consequences. and describes the technical and expressive components of printmaking, while also exploring the role it played as a form of resistance during the liberation struggle.

In 2003, Hobbs and Rankin published Rorke’s Drift Empowering Prints, which looks at the Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre, more popularly known as Rorke's Drift Art and Craft Centre. Their article reviews the art produced by the black artists who studied at the workshop, including its first-enrolled student Allina Ndebele, whom Hobbs has researched extensively in other publications such as her 2011 Water and Space, 2014 Allina Ndebele’s Tree of Life, and 2018 Mantis Wedding: Performing Power in the Loom.

Hobbs' 2006 publication, Messages and Meaning'', is a catalog for the MTN Art Collection of which she is curator. It is a collection of essays by writers such as Nessa Leibhammer, Elizabeth Rankin, Wilma Cruise and other prominent authors. It explores how the collection is "a tool for social investment, an educational resource, a means of inspiring in-house communication and debate, and a showcase of South African and African art to visitors".