Qualifications: BA Whitman , MA Uni Hawai'i PhD UCLA
Biography: Karen Stevenson, of Tahitian heritage, was born and raised in Los Angeles. She received her PhD in Oceanic Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1988. The following year was spent as a Rockerfeller Fellow at the Center for Pacific Studies at the University of Hawaii. Her writings and research have focused on the politics and institutionalisation of culture, art and identity, the Pacific Arts Festival, and most recently on Contemporary Pacific Art, particularly that produced by ‘urban Polynesians’ in New Zealand. She has published widely including Art AsiaPacific, the Art Journal, Art New Zealand, Pacific Studies, Pacific Arts, and The Contemporary Pacific. She is currently working on a book series project tentatively titled Pacific Art and Artists, and has just completed the editing on New Voyagers: Pacific Island Artists and the Challenge of Negotiating Within the Global Art World. She recently published The Frangipani is Dead, Contemporary Pacific Art in New Zealand (2008), was a co-editor for Re-Presenting Pacific Art (2009) and Pacific Arts: Persistence, Change and Meaning in Pacific Art (2002), and guest editor for Pacific Arts -- the Festival of Pacific Arts (2002). Karen is currently a Research Fellow at the Macmillan Brown Centre for pacific Studies, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.
