Carolyn Butler Palmer occupies the Williams Legacy Chair in the Department of History in Art at the University of Victoria (UVic). She studied at Carleton University, The University of British Columbia, The University of Utah, and the University of Pittsburgh. At Pittsburgh, she completed her Ph.D. with the dissertation, “'I won’t play primitive to your modern': The art and life of David Neel.” Dr. Butler Palmer has taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Allegheny College, and Edinboro University. She came to the University of Victoria in 2008 as Williams Legacy Chair in Modern and Contemporary Arts of the Pacific Northwest, a position created by the estate of local businessman and art collector Michael Williams. The Williams Legacy Chair research brief encompasses community-based research, collections research, and research about the arts of the Pacific Northwest region.
Dr. Butler Palmer is an art historian, studying the arts of the Pacific Northwest especially in the period from 1860 to present. She is most interested in questions of art, identity, and conceptulalization of the Pacific Northwest, and in the ethics of cross-cultural relations, and cosmopolitanism. She currently serves on the board of the Universities Art Association of Canada/L’Association d’art des universités du Canada (UAAC/AAUC).