A Story of Canadian Art: As Told by the Hart House Collection

by Christine Boyanoski, Bruce Kidd (Foreword), Barbara Fischer (Introduction)

Released to accompany a major touring exhibition, this publication documents an important chapter in the modern history of collecting and reveals how collections contribute to the shaping of both art history and national identity. Hart House was gifted by the Massey family to the University of Toronto in 1919 as a cultural centre where students, faculty, and the broader public could mingle and converse. Since the early 1920s, the Hart House Art Committee, comprised of university students, artists, faculty, and staff has been collecting art, originally focusing on the work of the Group of Seven and their contemporaries, as well as the Beaver Hall Group and Canadian Group of Painters. This unique collection rapidly gained a national and international reputation, with works loaned to exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, and the Tate Gallery in London, UK, among others. Accompanied by numerous archival photographs, the main essay details the growth of the collection including the establishment of the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery in 1982, one of North America's first university art galleries. Completing the publication are individual scholarly presentations of 40 major works by legendary figures such as A. Y. Jackson, Lawren Harris, Edwin Holgate, Tom Thomson, Emily Carr, Prudence Heward, André Biéler, David Milne, and B. C. Binning. Each work is featured with a full-page color plate.

124 pages, Paperback

Published October 30, 2014