Department of Art Assistant Professor Bart Pushaw is a self-described “art historian of the colonial Americas.” Photo by Angela Foster.
The vast majority of Greenland is uninhabitable, while the part that’s not is home primarily to indigenous Inuit, whose contributions to art are being researched and taught by a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga professor.
Dr. Bart Pushaw, on the tenure track as an assistant art professor, has visited Greenland six times—mostly as a researcher while working at the University of Copenhagen. Greenland is a colony of Denmark.
“It is the largest island in the world, so it is the biggest one on the map. But it’s hard to get to because the only way you can get there is flying either from Denmark or from Iceland,” said Pushaw, who earned his doctoral degree in art history from the University of Maryland in 2019, his master’s from the University of Chicago and his bachelor of arts from Indiana University.
“I knew pretty immediately that I wanted to do art history, I think, because I was always really into social studies in school. I grew up in a Dallas suburb that was actually very diverse, so I guess it was very normal for me that I had friends whose families were from all over the world.”
Pushaw is a self-described “art historian of the colonial Americas, focusing on the circumpolar North and Central America between 1700 and 1950.” When he was a postdoctoral fellow in the international research group “The Art of Nordic Colonials: Writing Transcultural Art Histories” in Copenhagen, he emphasized “the global entanglements of material and visual culture of the indigenous Arctic, especially when it coincides with the Black Atlantic and Pacific.”
Much of Pushaw’s research has been on where to find Inuit artifacts—everything from art to clothing and other materials.
“As an art historian, I am interested first and foremost in studying, understanding and teaching artworks, artifacts and material objects,” Pushaw said. “Many people presume art history is pretentious, partly because the discipline emerged from a European idea of refinement and connoisseurship [including the Italian Renaissance]. But in the 21st century, art history has serious stakes in the real world in connecting communities to their culture, especially when museums are often institutions that normalize the separation between people and their cultural belongings.”
Pushaw also spent time in Tallinn, Estonia, as part of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. government’s international exchange initiative that funnels grants to graduate students. He is currently the programming and events coordinator for the Association of Historians of American Art.
“My research focuses mostly on Greenland in the colonial period,” he said. “Since Greenland was colonized by Denmark and is still under Danish colonial dominance today, I work closely with Inuit museum directors, curators, and archaeologists to reconnect Inuit communities to their cultural heritage. This means I spend a lot of time looking for Inuit artworks in collections and archives that are often far away from the Arctic and have been taken by missionaries, scientists, travelers and other outsiders.
“Part of my research is restorative in that it is locating objects and artworks and understanding what they are so that we can advocate for their return home. This is also collaborative work. In practice, this means that my research is not only by what the field of art history might expect, but especially the perspectives and needs of Inuit stakeholders.”
Dr. Bart Pushaw joined the UTC faculty in 2023.
Pushaw works closely with museums and collections in and out of the Arctic to “propel the accessibility of Inuit, especially Kalaallit, cultural heritage and advance repatriation campaigns,” according to the nonprofit Norwegian Crafts.
Through his UTC classes, Pushaw takes undergraduates on a world tour of art. He is in his third semester at UTC after finding “the grass is not always greener”—even in Scandinavia.
“Professor Bart Pushaw’s teaching helps to enlarge the scholarship of indigenous art,” said Dr. Angie To, the UTC Art Department head. “The discipline of art history is no longer taught in a linear fashion focusing primarily on Europe; rather, it has been steadily expanding to encompass global perspectives. Dr. Pushaw’s research and teaching brings to our campus a rich and oftentimes inaccessible look at traditional indigenous crafts, creating a rich and rewarding experience for students.”
It’s his journey back to the United States and not all the trips to Greenland that have surprised Pushaw.
“I think if you would’ve told me even five years ago that I would be clamoring to leave Scandinavia to move back to the U.S. South, I would say that you were a crazy person. But I think it actually feels incredibly nourishing and fulfilling,” he said of his move to Chattanooga.
“I really love Chattanooga. I also had this sense that I definitely wanted to teach at a public school, and I wanted specifically and especially a state school that was really serving its community. I think that’s where I felt the most comfortable—and also where I felt that my classes could actually help people understand the world and give them an outlook in the way that they haven’t had that opportunity before.”
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