# Elizabeth Rankin

Elizabeth Deane Rankin is a South African–New Zealand fine arts 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 was Chair of the South African Association of Art Historians starting in 1985.
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's research focuses on neglected South African artists, and sculpture and print-making. Rankin published a history of Rorke's Drift printmakers with Philippa Hobbs in 2003. Rankin has written a biography of South African artist Peter Clarke, published in 2012, along with retrospective exhibitions at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town, in collaboration with Hobbs, and in Johannesburg. Rankin has also written about photographer Fiona Pardington, and artist Neil Pardington.
In 2012 Rankin was a visiting fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, where she worked with Prof. Dr. Rolf Schneider on the design of the frieze of the Voortrekker Monument. Rankin retired in 2016 and was appointed Professor Emeritus at Auckland. One of her notable doctoral students is academic and author Ngarino Ellis.

## Selected works
### Books

* Baker, Kriselle; Rankin, Elizabeth (2015). Neil Pardington: The Order of Things. Baker + Douglas.
* Hobbs, Philippa; Rankin, Elizabeth (2014). Listening to distant thunder: The art of Peter Clarke. Fernwood.
* Rankin, Elizabeth (2011). Baker, Kriselle (ed.). Fiona Pardington: the pressure of sunlight falling. Otago University Press.
* Rankin, Elizabeth; Hobbs, Phillippa (2003). Rorke's Drift: Empowering prints. Double Storey.
* Rankin, Elizabeth (1994). Images of metal: Post-war sculptures and assemblages in South Africa. Witwatersrand University Press.
* Rankin, Elizabeth; Dell, E; Meintjes, J (1989). Images of wood: Aspects of the history of sculpture in 20th-century South Africa. Johannesburg Art Gallery.
* Hobbs, Philippa; Rankin, Elizabeth (1997). Printmaking in a Transforming South Africa. David Philip Publishers. ISBN 0-86486334-9.

### Other works

* Elizabeth Rankin; Nessa Leibhammer (January 1996). "Scrambling (for) Africa". African Studies. 55 (2): 182–198. doi:10.1080/00020189608707855. ISSN 0002-0184. Wikidata Q58174768.
* Elizabeth Rankin (March 2009). "Mission madonnas imaging an african mother of god". Material Religion: the journal of objects, art and belief. 5 (1): 111–114. doi:10.2752/175183409X418793. ISSN 1743-2200. Wikidata Q57095265.
* Elizabeth Rankin; Carolyn Hamilton (December 1999). "REVISION; REACTION; RE‐VISION; The role of museums in (a) transforming South Africa". Museum Anthropology. 22 (3): 3–13. doi:10.1525/MUA.1999.22.3.3. ISSN 0892-8339. Wikidata Q130300740.
* Elizabeth Rankin; Robert Hodgins (April 1979). "The Concept of Truth to Material". De Arte. 14 (23): 3–11. doi:10.1080/00043389.1979.11760931. ISSN 0004-3389. Wikidata Q130300763.
* Elizabeth Rankin (21 March 2013). "Creating/Curating Cultural Capital: Monuments and Museums for Post-Apartheid South Africa". Humanities. 2 (1): 72–98. doi:10.3390/H2010072. ISSN 2076-0787. Wikidata Q130300820.