Irene Avaalaaqiaq has received commissions for public buildings from Churchill, Manitoba, to Minneapolis, to Ottawa. She has had solo exhibitions at the Isaacs/Innuit Gallery in Toronto and her work was included in a touring exhibition organized by the Baltimore Museum of Art. In 1999 she had a solo exhibition at the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre at the University of Guelph and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws from that institute.
Judith Nasby, founding director and curator of the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, animates the story of the gallery from its humble beginnings in the hallways of a university campus in 1916 to its latest incarnation as the internationally recognized Art Gallery of Guelph. The book is beautifully illustrated with eighty images of artworks in the permanent collection, beginning with the gallery's first acquisition, Tom Thomson's 1917 masterpiece The Drive, the last large canvas he painted before his tragic death. As curator, Nasby oversaw the creation of one of the most comprehensive sculpture parks in Canada and the amassing of a permanent collection of some nine thousand artworks. In The Making of a Museum Nasby reveals how the museum developed its internationally recognized collection of contemporary Inuit drawings and wall hangings that toured four continents. She discusses the development of the collection's specializations in contemporary works by Canadian silversmiths; historical European etchings; Woodland and Northeastern Indigenous beadwork; and others that arose from curatorial collaborations, such as molas by Kuna women artists from Panama and contemporary paintings and indigenous woodcuts from Chongqing, China. Nasby recounts her long career as founding director and curator, peppering the hundred-year history of cultural development on the University of Guelph campus and in the city with humorous anecdotes and personal insights to reveal how arts institutions can be created through dedication, serendipity, and perseverance.
If portraits could speak, what fascinating stories would they tell? For over two decades, Manitoban artist Gerald Kuehl has travelled to the far-fl ung corners of Canada to draw out these answers from the last generation of Indigenous Peoples born on the land, and, pencil in hand, to record their likenesses and experiences. Picking up where Kuehl’s acclaimed Portraits of the North left off , Portraits of the Far North follows the artist as he crosses the 60th parallel into Nunavut to meet the few Inuit Elders who still remember the days when their people lived entirely off the bounty of the land. Kuehl’s astonishing graphite pencil drawings and accompanying stories—the result of his travels in the Far North over thirteen years, hundreds of interviews with Elders, and thousands of hours at the drawing board—provide an unprecedented, poignant account of the changing realities Inuit experienced over the course of the last century, and their bright hopes for the future.
Archaeological digs have turned up sculptures in Inuit lands that are thousands of years old, but "Inuit art" as it is known today only dates back to the beginning of the 1900s. Early art was traditionally produced from soft materials such as whalebone, and tools and objects were also fashioned out of stone, bone, and ivory because these materials were readily available. The Inuit people are known not just for their sculpture but for their graphic art as well, the most prominent forms being lithographs and stonecuts. This work affords easy access to information to those interested in any type of Inuit art. There are annotated entries on over 3,761 articles, books, catalogues, government documents, and other publications.
The eighteenth century saw the rise of new and more sympathetic understanding of animals as philosophy, literature, and art argued that animals could feel and therefore possess inalienable rights. This idea gave birth to a diverse movement that affects how we understand our relationship to the natural world. The Cry of Nature details a crucial period in the history of this movement, revealing the significant role art played in the growth of animal rights. Stephen F. Eisenman shows how artists from William Hogarth to Pablo Picasso and Sue Coe have represented the suffering, chastisement, and execution of animals. These artists, he demonstrates, illustrate the lessons of Montaigne, Rousseau, Darwin, Freud, and others—that humans and animals share an evolutionary heritage of sentience, intelligence, and empathy, and thus animals deserve equal access to the domain of moral right. Eisenman also traces the roots of speciesism to the classical world and describes the social role of animals in the demand for emancipation. Instructive, challenging, and always engaging, The Cry of Nature is a book for anyone interested in animal rights, art history, and the history of ideas.
This volume makes available, in English, most of the essays written to accompany the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s exhibition of the same name. Not included, are the essays by Gisela Hoffman, Bernadette Driscoll and Elizabeth McLuhan and the exhibition catalogue section which appeared in the original German publication. This book provides an overview of the evolution of contemporary Native Canadian art. Regional styles as well as individual artistic styles are discussed and the various subjects, themes and techniques reflected in the works are examined.
By the late twentieth century, idyllic depictions of eighteenth-century manorial landscapes had become artistic expressions of dislocation. Western agricultural paradigms had shifted, as had the relationship between art and agriculture. "The Cultivated Landscape" uses over seventy illustrations to look at the development of Western agriculture from feudal times to the present. Craig Pearson and Judith Nasby discuss the evolution of how we think about agriculture, its use of the land and impact on landscape, and how landscape has been portrayed historically in art. They also offer a wider discussion on the role that science and economics have played in agricultural development and the parallels to changes in art form. "The Cultivated Landscape" ends with a discussion of the complex issues facing agriculture today, the need for greater connectivity between agriculture and our environment, and options for the future.
In 1954, eager buyers lined up three abreast for over half a block to get into the Canadian Handicrafts Guild in Montreal where, once inside, they wrestled and argued to purchase stone sculptures carved by Inuit artists. In a short span, interest in Inuit carving became a worldwide phenomenon and a major source of income for the Inuit. Their sculptures, tapestries and prints later became the unofficial national art of Canada, gracing homes, corporate offices, postage stamps and international art showcases. This is the story of how Inuit art came to be regarded as some of the best Indigenous art of the twentieth century. James Houston, an artist as well as a brilliant raconteur and lecturer, was unquestionably instrumental in its development. His enthralling Arctic stories were a gift to journalists, but his inconsistencies became a major hurdle for historians. This book portrays the unusual alliance between James Houston and early Inuit art enthusiasts, the Canadian Handicrafts Guild and the Canadian Department of Northern Affairs. Through painstaking research, it presents their adventures, management, concerns and successes.
