Holiday Reading II: Nostalgic Noel
A layout from "Personal Bests," a wide-ranging survey of 1980s art scene figures published in the fall 1985 edition of Canadian Art.
With winter weather hemming in Canadians from coast to coast this week, there’s no better time to pick up a book (or a blog) and escape to another time and place. And so it is that Canadian Art provides a second instalment of our special holiday reading package. In three articles spanning the mid-1980s and early 1990s, one gets a sense of the era’s who’s who, of Nan Hoover’s little-known Canuck connections and of popular reaction to a previous generation of museum renovations.
“Personal Bests” by various authors
Canadian Art, Fall 1985
“Who will survive the turbulent 80s with reputations intact? What would be hauled to safety first if flames threatened to engulf a collection?” These are a just a couple of the questions that the broad-ranging survey article “Personal Bests” tried to answer in 1985. Polling everyone from then-Banff-Centre-head Alvin Balkin and “lawyer Maureen McTeer” to author Pierre Berton and artist Joyce Wieland, “Personal Bests” captures an era in the Canadian art scene.
“The Final Frontier” by Richard Rhodes
Canadian Art, Summer 1992
Pioneering video and performance artist Nan Hoover, who passed away in June 2008, exhibited extensively during her 40-year career. But as well shown as the Dutch-American Hoover might have been in Europe and the United States, she also had a little-known Canadian connection. In the early 1990s, Hoover was hired on to create public art in the tiny mining town of Wells, British Columbia. In this article from the summer 1992 edition of Canadian Art, Richard Rhodes looks at the work that Hoover produced in Wells, and explores why the town sought her out.
“The Oedipus Edifice” by Robert Fulford
Canadian Art, Fall 1992
With all the attention surrounding Frank Gehry’s redesign of the Art Gallery of Ontario this fall, it seemed timely to reflect on past assessments of AGO renos. In this article from the fall 1992 edition of Canadian Art, critic Robert Fulford assesses the then-new Barton Myers redesign of the gallery. Along the way, Fulford also provides a useful overview of the AGO’s origins and the succession of architects who have attempted to shape its hallowed halls.
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