In addition to teaching at RISD, R. Tripp Evans is a professor of the history of art at Wheaton College in Norton, MA, where he specializes in American material culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He earned his BA in architectural history from the University of Virginia and his MA and PhD in the history of art from Yale University, where he was named the Henry S. McNeil Fellow in American Decorative Arts. He is the author of two books: Romancing the Maya: Mexican Antiquity in the American Imagination, 1820–1915 (University of Texas Press, 2004) and Grant Wood: A Life (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), the latter of which received the National Award for Arts Writing.

A frequent public lecturer on topics ranging from historic preservation to house museums to LGBTQ history, he has served on the boards of the Providence Preservation Society, the Providence Athenaeum and the Grant Wood Art Colony, and in 2017 he was appointed state commissioner on the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission. He has served as a visiting lecturer at Yale University, Wellesley College and Brown University.