Moderator: Liv Valmested, Univ. of Manitoba
Speakers:
Amy Furness and Georgiana Uhlyarik, Art Gallery of Ontario, " Betty Goodwin: Work Notes"
Tobi Bruce, Art Gallery of Hamilton, "William Kurelek, The Messenger"
Randall Speller, Art Gallery of Ontario, retired, "Thoreau on Thoreau: a Canadian look at an American Classic"
The 2010-2011 exhibition Betty Goodwin: Work Notes featured over 80 of the artist’s notebooks, tracing ideas and visual motifs through five decades of Goodwin’s career and including just six works of art. Far from being an “archival” show, the exhibition was an outstanding success as a contemporary art installation, and was named the top exhibition of the year by the Toronto Star.
Canadian painter William Kurelek was an intriguing combination of everyman and visionary, and his work, currently on view at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, is equally complex. In 1997 Kurelek’s widow deposited 4000 photographic images taken by her husband to Library and Archives Canada. An exploration of this body of work vis-à-vis the painter’s oeuvre allows us to reconsider the ways in which he structured his compositions by using photography to reconcile image, memory and place.
J.E.H. MacDonald, a founding member of the Group of Seven, was a devotee of Henry David Thoreau, going so far as to name his only child after the philosopher. Subsequently, Thoreau MacDonald, one of Canada’s foremost illustrators and book designers, admitted to a lifelong affinity for his namesake. A recently re-discovered 1933 manuscript of illustrations and book designs by him for an unpublished illustrated edition of Walden has now come into the collection Edward P. Taylor Research Library and Archives (Art Gallery of Ontario).