 Along with Bill Holm and Harry Hawthorn, he was one of a small coterie of academics in the 1950s and '60s who worked to bring Northwest Coast art to international prominence.Duff obtained a B.A.from the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1949 and a master's in anthropology in 1951 from the University of Washington in Seattle, where he studied with Erna Gunther.