Lab work
Lab work, Winter 2008, pp. 28
One of the pleasures of editing Canadian Art is saying yes to invitations to sit in on year-end grad crits at Canadian art schools. The occasion is always an opportunity to meet teaching colleagues and get a head start on art that often finds its way into the country’s public and private gallery system. Last fall, a concrete stalactite sculpture by the Montreal artist Patrick Coutu was on view at the National Gallery in Ottawa and it prompted a vivid memory of Patrick five years ago showing me a prototype for this work in the old garage that serves as studio space for graduate students at Concordia University. It was art that was ready to show then and now it’s in our national museum—a gratifying reality check.
Art-school graduate programs are now where the art world starts. They are incubation programs for art production that offer within their often modest walls unmatched discussions of the historical roots and developing trends in contemporary art. For this special issue on art education, we have gathered a range of feature stories on some of the prominent art schools across the country.
Some, like NSCAD University, have a grand history that has helped shape the international art world. Others, like Concordia University and l’Université du Québec à Montréal, anchor the art scene in the cities they inhabit, and may even be key components in those scenes’ resurgence over the past decade. The Ontario College of Art and Design, in Toronto, is attempting to build a signature identity to match its signature building and redefine the nature of art education. In Banff, the Winnipeg artist Paul Butler has endeavoured to create his own art school for artists, thereby questioning the current institutional nature of art education. In Vancouver, at the epicentre of photoconceptualism, the Emily Carr University of Art and Design has managed to build one of the leading painting departments in the country.
A report on a curatorial-studies conference in Faenza, Italy, interviews with 2008’s top M.F.A graduates and an essay on some of the looming, unanswered questions in art education, written by John Kissick (director of the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph) and illustrated by Kristan Horton, round out our overview. There are other schools and other stories. In future issues, we plan to keep pace with them. It is a sector that adds another essential dimension to Canadian art.
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