150 Years | 150 Works:
Canadian Art as Historical Act

The Galerie de l’UQAM unveils its new virtual exhibition

Three years in the making, UQAM‘s 150 Years | 150 Works: Canadian Art as Historical Act brings together the work of more than 150 artists and will be online for the next five years. The exhibition is produced by Galerie de l’UQAM with the support of the Virtual Exhibits Investment Program, Virtual Museum of Canada. It joins The Painting Project: A Snapshot of Painting in Canada, another virtual exhibition launched by Galerie de l’UQAM in 2013, online until November 2018.

The exhibition

The virtual exhibition 150 Years | 150 Works: Canadian Art as Historical Act presents art as an integral part of Canada’s social and political history. It looks at Canada through works that have in some way shaped or changed the country’s history over the past century and a half.

Skawennati, “Face off”, 2010

Most but not all of the works in this panorama are presented according to their year of production: here and there, diverging from chronological order serves to recast historical relationships and challenge traditional perceptions. Drawn from the collections of major museums, university galleries and private collections, the exhibited works include both well-known icons and little-known surprises. Brief texts discuss each one and interpret the context in which it was made. Supplemental descriptions and images provide a deeper understanding in some cases.

Navigation and educational tools

Eric Cameron, “Lettuce”, 1979

The exhibition can be discovered by following a timeline of Canadian history or by randomly browsing a mosaic of images that often leads to unexpected juxtapositions.

Visitors can also follow the threads suggested by four categories: representing history, making history, expanding history and reopening history. Being open-ended, these categories foster exploration of and reflection on Canadian art as historical act. An interactive tool also invites users to establish their own take on history by selecting works that pique their interest or curiosity.

This panorama also includes several educational tools to help better understand the Canadian artistic context: a lexicon, vignettes about the museum sector, references and a quiz.

Three years in the making, this virtual exhibition brings together the work of more than 150 artists and will be online for the next five years.

The artists

Anne Kahane, “Maquette pour le Monument au prisonnier politique inconnu”, 1953

Charles Alexander, Edmund Alleyn, Walter S. Allward, David Altmejd, Raymonde April, Kenojuak Ashevak, Shuvinai Ashoona, Sonny Assu, Anna Banana, Carl Beam, Henri Beau, Mary Alexandra Bell Eastlake, Rebecca Belmore, John Wilson Bengough, Karl Beveridge, Dominique Blain, William Blair Bruce, Alfred Boisseau, Paul-Émile Borduas, Napoléon Bourassa, Shary Boyle, Fritz Brandtner, Bertram Brooker, William Brymner, Hank Bull, Cecil Buller, Jack Bush, Oscar Cahén, Eric Cameron, Colin Campbell, Janet Cardiff, Florence Carlyle, Emily Carr, Ian Carr-Harris, Melvin Charney, William Henry Clapp, Paraskeva Clark, George Clutesi, Alex Colville, Carole Condé, Emily Coonan, Kate Craig, Robert Weir Crouch, Maurice Cullen, Greg Curnoe, Marian Dale Scott, Maud Darling, Raphaëlle de Groot, Mario Doucette, Stan Douglas, Robert Scott Duncanson, Aganetha Dyck, L. Dumont, Charles Edenshaw, Isabella Edenshaw, Allan Edson, Paterson Ewen, Geoffrey Farmer, Brendan Fernandes, Marc-Aurèle Fortin, Daniel Fowler, John A. Fraser, Vera Frenkel, Clarence Gagnon, Yves Gaucher, Pierre Gauvreau, General Idea, Hortense M. Gordon, Rodney Graham, Mattie Gunterman, Lawren S. Harris, Robert Harris, Alexander Henderson, Prudence Heward, Edwin Holgate, Frances Anne Hopkins, Robert Houle, Adrien Hébert, Louis-Philippe Hébert, Alexander Y. Jackson, Luis Jacob, Louis Jobin, Henri Julien, Brian Jungen, Anne Kahane, Paul Kane, Wanda Koop, Cornelius Krieghoff, Suzy Lake, Alfred Laliberté, Molly Lamb Bobak, Fernand Leduc, Ozias Leduc, Jean Paul Lemieux, Serge Lemoyne, Jules-Ernest Livernois, Kenneth Lochhead, Marion Long, Ken Lum, Hamilton MacCarthy, Jock Macdonald, Edith Hester Macdonald-Brown, Arnaud Maggs, Liz Magor, Agnes Martin, Harry Mayerovitch, Hannah Maynard, Helen Galloway McNicoll, George Bures Miller, David B. Milne, Guido Molinari, Kent Monkman, James W. Morrice, Michael Morris, Norval Morrisseau, Harold Mortimer-Lamb, Louis Muhlstock, Kathleen Munn, Laura Muntz Lyall, Nadia Myre, N.E. Thing Co. Ltd., Shelley Niro, William Notman, Will Ogilvie, Lucius R. O’Brien, Paul Peel, Alfred Pellan, Christiane Pflug, Annie Pootoogook, Mary Pratt, Rober Racine, Jon Rafman, Carl Ray, Bill Reid, George A. Reid, Jean Paul Riopelle, Robert Roussil, Monique Régimbald-Zeiber, Henry Sandham, Frederic B. Schell, Charlotte Schreiber, Jack Shadbolt, Henrietta Shore, Skawennati, Jori Smith, Michael Snow, Jana Sterbak, Françoise Sullivan, Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté, Gabor Szilasi, The Clichettes, Jeff Thomas, Tom Thomson, Diana Thorneycroft, Lilias Torrance Newton, Claude Tousignant, Vincent Trasov, Judas Ullulaq, John Vanderpant, Frederick H. Varley, Zacharie Vincent, Horatio Walker, Jeff Wall, Margaret Watkins, Homer Watson, Benjamin West, Irene F. Whittome, Joyce Wieland, Arthur Willmore, Elizabeth Wyn Wood, Jin-me Yoon.

Molly Lamb Bobak, “Private Roy, Canadian Women’s Army Corps”, 1946

The curator

Josée Desforges is a phD student in Art History at Université du Québec à Montréal. Her research project, for which she received the Joseph-Armand-Bombardier Fellowship, focuses on the presence of artworks in Canadian federal government buildings and their replacement as a result of changes in political parties in power. She is also interested in caricature, notably in her memoir entitled Entre création et destruction : les comportements des types du Juif et du Canadien français dans les caricatures antisémites publiées par Adrien Arcand à Montréal entre 1929 et 1939, which won the Michel de la Chenelière Prize in Art and Culture awarded by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Josée Desforges has lectured extensively, written several articles and book chapters, and co-organized symposia on the issues of censorship, iconoclasm and satire.

Jin-me Yoon, “Group of Sixty-Seven” (detail), 1996-1997

The Virtual Museum of Canada

The Virtual Museum of Canada, managed by the Canadian Museum of History with the financial support of the Government of Canada, is the largest digital source of stories and experiences shared by Canada’s museums and heritage organizations. The Virtual Exhibits investment program helps Canadian museums and heritage organizations develop dynamic medium- to large-scale online products exploring Canadian history, heritage and culture.
virtualmuseum.ca

Paul-Émile Borduas, “L’étoile noire”, 1957

Support provided by

The exhibition 150 Years | 150 Works: Canadian Art as Historical Act was developed by Galerie de l’UQAM with the support of the Virtual Exhibits Investment Program, Virtual Museum of Canada.

Galerie de l’UQAM wishes to thank the artists, museums, galleries and rights holders who collaborated in the preparation of this exhibition. Galerie de l’UQAM aknowledges the support of collections and individuals that made such a large project possible: Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Confederation Centre of the Arts, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Musée d’art de Joliette, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, National Gallery of Canada, University of Lethbridge Art Gallery.

Visit 150 Years | 150 Works: Canadian Art as Historical Act at 150ans150oeuvres.uqam.ca/en/

Images: courtesy of UQAM
Feature image: Kent Monkman, “The Daddies”, 2016

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