Catherine Annau

Long before she rediscovered one of the most talented lithographers of the 19th century and curated an international blockbuster featuring his work, Katharine Lochnan had dreamt of taking a trip to Ireland to explore her roots. When she finally found room in her busy schedule as Deputy Director of Research and The R. Fraser Elliott Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Art Gallery of Ontario, her timing was impeccable. Unbeknownst to her, the trip to County Clare to look into archival records coincided with a rare event in her ancestral line: the second ever reunion of the ‘Ui Lochlainn’ clan and the first in a decade. “To arrive there at that moment was extraordinary synchronicity,” she told me when we sat down in her office at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Warmly welcomed by the group, Lochnan found the trip to be both personally and professionally propitious. Clambering over the rocky countryside, she fell in love with the landscape. “I just had the feeling of something greater than ourselves,” she said. “I felt that it held the mysteries of my own existence back to the dawn of time.”

When she returned to Toronto, Lochnan embarked on another journey. Though raised a Catholic, she had left the Church after Vatican II. Nonetheless, she registered for courses in the spiritual direction program Regis College, a Jesuit Institute associated with the University of Toronto. Following a year of intense study with a group of like-minded individuals, she informed her classmates that she was thinking of retiring from the Art Gallery of Ontario to devote herself to ministry. But their response was not what she expected. “They told me ‘there’s a problem: you’re already in your ministry. It’s curating’. I said curating isn’t a ministry. Oh yes, they said, it is,” Lochnan told me. “My teacher said we feel you are already in your ministry and you still have something else to do.”

So Lochnan stayed on at the AGO. And she didn’t have to wait too long to find her calling. Later that year, while attending a conference in New York City, she visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “I always go to look at paintings at the MET. This time I found myself wondering if there was such a thing as a mystical landscape. And all of a sudden I began to see the 19^th century pictures as if for the first time. I thought ‘Oh my God! Monet is doing it! Van Gogh is doing it! Gauguin is doing it! And I knew I was onto something.”

At dinner later that night, Paul Lang, the new Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the National Gallery of Canada asked her if she had any ideas for exhibitions. “I told him I’m really interested in mysticism and landscape. To my surprise, he said ‘that’s a brilliant idea. I’ll support you’.” Lochnan recalls that from that moment on “doors just kept opening”. When she approached her colleagues at the AGO, though normally hesitant about religious subjects, they supported her idea. “I made it clear that this was about the spiritual, that mysticism was at the root of all religions.”

Lochnan then flew to Paris to meet with the Director of the Musée d’Orsay. She was on a mission to convince him to lend her key pictures from the collection. “Not only did he say that I could I borrow them,” Lochnan said. “But he told me he wanted the show.”

Thrilled, Lochnan invited colleagues, award-winning author and curator Roald Nasgaard and one of the leading world experts in Van Gogh, art historian Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, to work with her as guest curators. The group began to select which images would ultimately be included. There was one problem. “As art historians, we couldn’t articulate the mystical,” said Lochnan. “Frankly, I felt that we were on holy ground and needed some help.” So Lochnan assembled a group of theologians and the team began to form a common language. “Together we focused on and identified the characteristics of what we called mystical landscapes. Historians and scientists joined us and we had the most extraordinary conversations.”

Charles Marie Dulac, a little-known late nineteenth century French lithographer, became central to the concept of the show. Considered by some to be a mystic, Dulac explored themes and aesthetic principles that guided the committee’s search. “Once we had spent time with his work and we understood the qualities that were inherent in it, we found it easier to identify the mystical qualities in other people’s work. So he became a kind of a litmus test.”

Lochnan had first discovered Dulac in the 1980s. “I was at Fred Mulder’s gallery in Hampstead. Fred was an art dealer from Saskatchewan who specialized in 19th century French prints. When I saw this portfolio of lithographs called Paysages, I thought that it was simply gorgeous. And I asked Fred ‘Who is this guy? His work is beautiful’.”

Though he received recognition in his own time, by the late 20^th century, Dulac had largely been forgotten. Born in Paris in 1866, Dulac worked as a commercial artist, supporting himself by painting stage sets and apartment interiors, and working in the wallpaper industry. In his early twenties, he was diagnosed with lead poisoning, having absorbed lead through the white paint he worked with. Knowing that he had only a short time left to live, Dulac entered a Franciscan convent in Vézelay, Burgundy. There, he had a conversion experience.  He dedicated the rest of his life to making works of art that were devotional in nature. Unable to become a monk because of his poor health, when Dulac died in 1898 at age 32, he became a tertiary, a member of the lay Third Order, and was buried wearing a Franciscan monk’s robe.

Dulac worked extensively in lithography. As a medium, it was beginning to be adopted by fine artists like James McNeill Whistler and Édouard Vuillard. Dulac demonstrated a sophisticated mastery of the form that surpassed his peers. “Perhaps because of his applied art background, he was able to combine stones with zinc plates, use many colors and incredibly subtle colors, and superimpose things and register them,” said Lochnan. “His palette is very understated, very subtle, and very idiosyncratic. He knew how to work in a way that gives an illusion of three dimensions but is also two-dimensional. He would often play with the same image, changing only the colors that he used.

Lochnan fell in love with his work. “I began to buy Dulac hand over fist,” she said. Work quickly spread in the art world that she was collecting him. Lochnan recalls that every summer a dealer from New York would arrive in Toronto with prints to sell. “He began to look for stuff for me. He brought me drawings and pastels and then the ten variations of the same plate, which were ultimately in the exhibition. And,” she added with some satisfaction, “they sold me those at a discount.”

She soon discovered she had an ally in former diplomat and ambassador to the United States, Allan Gotlieb. A great lover of 19th century French prints, Gotlieb had amassed an extensive private collection, which included work by Dulac. “When he saw that I was buying Dulac, he offered us some beautiful prints from his private collection,” Lochnan told me. “It is thanks to Alan that we have the variations on some of the plates in our portfolios.”

Lochnan was determined that the AGO become the North American institute of record for Dulac, an objective she ultimately achieved. From the research done to date, it appears that Dulac created two major series of prints (otherwise known as portfolios). Suite de Paysages has eight original lithographs and zincographs and Le Cantique des Creatures has nine impressions. He died before he was able to compete his final series, Credo. It contains only three prints. Lochnan was able to assemble two of these portfolios, the Suite de Paysages and Le Cantique des Creatures, in addition to many variations on individual prints. It is that collection that lies at the heart of Mystical Landscapes. At the AGO installation, Dulac was the sole artist to have his own exhibition room. Entering through a doorway from the main hall into an intimate rectangular salon, I had the sensation of being in a place of worship or chapel. This effect was quite deliberate. “We wanted to create a chapel like setting and a kind of sacred space. A sanctuary,” Lochnan confirmed.

Dulac’s plate The Canticle of Creatures is perhaps his most famous and impressive. Lochnan hung the ten variations of the print along one wall so that viewers could understand how he conveyed meaning through repetition and variation of colour and saturation. “The Canticle of St Francis’ is a hymn to nature as the great work of art of the creator,” Lochnan explained. “Dulac depicts a man plowing a field, creating the furrows in which to do the planting. And there is a little chapel there, dedicated to St. Barbara, who is the patron saint of storms. We see that the chapel is protected by this huge and wonderful tree.”

A historian on her team discovered that the Lord’s Prayer was penciled in the margin of one of the proof impressions of La Chapelle a Minerville. “Knowing this, we realized that Dulac is inspired by the first line from the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’.” But because his work is so evocative, Lochnan believes that the viewer can feel his intention that without having to know the Catholic liturgy. “The beauty of his prints is that they hint at something rather than trying and explain it fully,” explains Lochnan. “If you’re trying to deal in the realm of the transcendent you don’t want to be too explicit.”

Dulac didn’t paint many pictures and the five paintings that are found in the exhibition are among the few that survive. Four of them depict a sun setting over the Tiber Valley and were painted when Dulac visited Assisi, the home of St. Francis. These paintings are emblematic of a mystical union, according to Lochnan. “The sun has three rays coming out of it, which are Trinitarian. The notion of the Trinity (God, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) is very important in Franciscan theology. All the colors are running together, creating a sense of unity where the landscape quietly disappears as the sun sets. I think that these sunsets, where the last rays of light are disappearing, is Dulac’s way of coming towards mystical unity and harmony.”

Unexpectedly for Lochnan, the Dulac room became a personal place of sanctuary and comfort. As she was in the midst of the final preparation for the opening in Toronto, Lochnan’s husband of forty years, the architect George Yost, suddenly died. Overcome with grief, she debated taking time off but ultimately continued to work. “My colleagues didn’t know it at the time but sometimes I would slip into the Dulac room and cry. Then I would pull myself together and go out and carry on.”

Five years in the making, Mystical Landscapes was a critical and popular success, boasting capacity crowds. After five months, it closed in February 2017 and was reinstalled at the Musée d’Orsay, where it opened last month. Lochnan travelled to Paris to supervise the installation and attend the opening. “The opening at Orsay was overwhelming,” Lochnan told me. “There were literally thousands of people either in the galleries or waiting outside to enter the museum.” The exhibition is so popular that the numbers of viewers in Paris is exceeding previous records at Orsay. Projected attendance by the time the exhibition closes is close to half a million visitors. “It is so popular that they have to restrict entrants to 4,500 per day for the safety of the art works.”

And after forty-seven years at the AGO, Lochnan recently stepped down as Senior Curator of International Exhibitions, and now holds the title of Senior Curator Emeritus. Not one to retire, she envisions curating a solo show that would give Dulac his due. “I think he is a fascinating artist and he’s become very important to me. I don’t know if the Gallery would ever want to do a Dulac exhibition but we have the material,” she says with pride. “You know, nobody’s really looked at this before. And it is ripe for further development. Maybe that is what I’ll be doing from now on with my team: continuing to develop what we’ve begun.”

Au-delà des étoiles, le paysage mystique, de Monet à Kandinsky (Mystical Landscapes) is running at the Musée d’Orsay until June 25, 2017.

Johnnie Eisen’s recent exhibition Breath at Toronto’s Akasha Art Projects is a visually arresting show comprised of nine large-scale colour photographs, each one a tightly composed image of a single tree. Under Eisen’s gaze, the intricate yet simple beauty of tree trunks and the elaborate patterns of their bark is intimately framed. The photographs, with their interplay of light, texture and detail, invite viewers to reevaluate their relationship to the physical world.

For Eisen this is the point. “We are simply not alive to what’s around us,” he told me when we sat down at his home a few weeks ago. “We keep on moving. We get in our cars and slam the doors shut, shutting ourselves off. We walk down the street, not looking at anyone.” According to Eisen, trees offer us a point of connection.

Now 71, Eisen’s fascination with nature goes all the way back to his childhood in midtown Toronto. He remembers taking elementary school trips to Sherwood Park. It was there, at age ten that he first started taking photos of woodlands. “Trees always conveyed a comforting presence to me. That may have come about within the first year or so of my life. When I was placed in my crib for my afternoon nap, I would fall asleep while watching the shadows of leaves dancing about on the window shades.”

Having known Eisen for over twenty years, I’ve had the pleasure of watching his career evolve from being a much sought after editorial photographer whose work was featured in magazines such as Saturday Night and Report on Business, to having his photographic prints acquired by the National Gallery of Canada and private companies such as the TD Bank. The renowned design firm Yabu Pushelberg chose one of Eisen’s photos from his series Entanglement for their interiors of the W Hotel, Taipei. Eisen’s work is also found in the private collections of award-winning Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan and Game of Thrones cinematographer Jonathan Freeman. With four decades of exhibitions to his credit, he has come a long way since his sold his first image to the National Film Board’s Still’s Division.

In 2012 a pairing of silver-based photographic prints were exhibited in Flora and Fauna: 400 Years of Artists Inspired by Nature, at the National Gallery of Canada. Among many other artists, this exhibition included works by Rembrandt and Lucien Freud and toured galleries across the country. “It’s odd to be able to say that you’re showing with Freud and Rembrandt at the National Gallery, just upstairs from Van Gogh.”

The origin of his latest show Breath took place several years ago when Eisen was shooting images for his previous exhibition The Woods. For The Woods, his composite, multilayered colour images suggested a nature that is almost impenetrable. Impossibly lush and dense, this is a dark, uncertain vision of nature that lies somewhere between the real world and that of a dream.

While working on The Woods, he had a revelation. “I started to look at certain trees and listening to the landscape around the trees. I began to think about what the trees were ‘hearing’ and found myself listening to the environment they exist in. I had nothing formal in mind at the time because I was really absorbed in the other project.”

The listening triggered a second element, which Eisen would incorporate into Breath. He recorded the ambient sound around each tree in the series. Using their smart phones, viewers can choose to listen to these tracks while viewing each photo. The results are not what you might expect: what you see may belong to nature but what you hear is decidedly urban. Trucks and passing traffic can be heard in the distance. For Eisen, this dissonance is as much spiritual as it is real. “We’re all so deeply distracted by the ever increasing noise that permeates our lives, and I wanted to seduce people with images that are beautiful and voluptuous. The audio component provides a startling contrast. This is my way of stating a simple idea, simply and directly, “C’mon people, slow down, look around and take a breath.”

Although primarily working with photography, this is not the first time that Eisen has utilized other media in his artwork. His 2003 work Sittings, a 10-hour collection of 60 video “portraits” toured across the country. What unites Sittings with Breath is a line that goes through all of his work, a sense of ambiguity and inquisitiveness, a yearning to delve beneath the surface of the image to reveal the inner life and light. Challenging the truthfulness of the photograph, he produces precise, well-wrought ambiguity.

In 2009, Eisen was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and his voice has weakened to the point where he can be hard to hear. The illness has impacted his mobility as well, but with the help of Bob Dirstein, his spouse of 37 years, he is still able to explore subjects that have always fascinated him. “My work is not about my illness, but unquestionably, it has influenced it,” he said. “Bringing the trees and the soundscape together was, for me, purely an emotional response. I wanted to pay attention to the soundscape around us. And I wanted the trees to be utterly gorgeous.”

As the world’s population increasingly lives in cities, we are becoming more and more divorced from the natural world, leading us to take trees for granted. Eisen’s accomplishment is all the more remarkable for making us encounter these magnificent plants anew.

Negotiations are currently under way for Breath to move to the First Canadian Place Gallery for May 10- June 30, 2017. For those who want more information on Eisen’s work, he can be reached via email at johnnie.eisen@sympatico.ca.

Billed as the “first exhibit examining the history of women’s self-portraiture in Canada”, The Artist Herself at the Art Gallery of Hamilton was one best art shows I’ve seen in many years. It took a fresh and unique look at the work of Canadian women artists spanning the years from 1700 to the early 1960s. Composed of fifty-eight carefully curated paintings, drawings, textiles and other objects from over twenty-eight lenders, the exhibition included everything from traditional self-portraits to button blankets to dolls.

Curated by Alicia Boutilier of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston and Tobi Bruce of the AGH, the show was conceived, in part, as an homage to their mentors, Dorothy Farr and Natalie Luckyj, who had created the first show ever to look at historical women’s art in Canada, the seminal From Women’s Eyes: Women Painters In Canada exhibit in 1975. Longtime collaborators and friends, Boutilier and Bruce wanted to do a new show to commemorate the 40^th anniversary of the first.

“We realized that we couldn’t do From Women’s Eyes again,” Boutilier told me when the three of us talked by phone last week. “I was thinking self-portraits would be an interesting theme. There had been exhibitions of women’s self-portraits internationally, and a number of books, but this had not been done in Canada.” When Boutilier first made the suggestion to Bruce in early 2012, Bruce was lukewarm. “Frankly I thought it sounded really boring,” Bruce laughed.

But then the two spent a weekend tossing around various ideas and drilling down on questions of identity: what exactly constitutes a self-portrait? Does it have to be concerned with likeness? Must self-portraiture depict the face of the maker? Merely posing these questions made them realize that they were onto something, and that they “wanted to approach women’s self-portraiture in a new way, not in the traditional canonical sense.”

By rejecting the traditional equation that likeness equals identity, Boutilier and Bruce had the genesis of an exciting new show. “Once we had this framework, we could argue about whether this work is a self-portrait or not,” Bruce said. “And now we could include a range of objects, such as textiles, in addition to painting.”

Boutilier and Bruce reached out to fellow curators across the country, asking for their assistance in exploring this broadened notion of identity in relation to self-portraiture and seeking their expertise in locating exciting works. Once the working list was in place, they reached out to 35 colleagues (curators, artists, art historians, artist descendants), asking them to contribute short written commentaries on individual works. Having successfully applied for grant money to mount the exhibit, the two women were able to travel to various museums across the country to look at pieces first hand and determine if they would work in the upcoming show. “Not until you are in the space, do you really get a sense of the scale and if a piece will work,” Bruce said.

Eventually Boutilier and Bruce drew up a short list. Printing out reproductions, the two curators laid out their selections. They looked for diversity of expression and material. In addition to reaching across 200 years, they wanted to have regional variety and a balance of artists with ‘name recognition’ and women who were completely unknown. A practicum student working on the project under Boutilier’s supervision, for example, came across the work of Bertha May Ingle, a 19^th-century southern Ontario painter and brought it to her attention. “It was just a small self-portrait, and yet, it was so powerful.”

As time went on, the two women began to explore how the objects ‘spoke’ to each other. “We moved the reproductions around and to see how they worked together,” Boutilier said. “And we began to have a sense of certain adjacencies.” These discoveries began to change the shape and selections for the show. “What about this one of Emily Carr with her back to the viewer? Or a painted tea canister by Maud Lewis? We started to explore what fits.”

Amongst the objects that captured my heart were two tiny Muskego Cree dolls, created around 1790-1800 by women who lived close to a Hudson’s Bay post. According to Bruce, these dolls are extremely rare – there are only seven remaining in the world and none in Canada. “It was very tricky to get them at all,” recalled Bruce. After a false start, they were able to borrow them from a private collection in California. “One of the exciting things about the dolls is that they represent cross-cultural exchange,” Boutilier said. “They incorporate both traditional and trade materials: porcupine quills, but also cloth and glass beads.”

The Artist Herself ultimately toured four galleries: the Agnes at Queen’s University in Kingston, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the Kelowna Art Gallery. As it turned out, no two shows were quite the same. Though Boutilier and Bruce travelled with the show to help hang it, each host curator was given the freedom to place the objects in their gallery as they wished. “The in-house curators know their spaces. We gave them the opportunity to shape the show at their venue. Bruce said. “Thus the show looked different in all four spaces. Visitors to each venue would have different exhibitions.”

Boutilier and Bruce faced an additional problem. Given the fragility of some of the work, not all of the 58 pieces were able to travel to all four venues. For example, Pauline Johnson’s buckskin dress, a showstopper at the Agnes in Kingston, was too fragile to travel. “That was a bit of heartbreak,” Bruce said. Photographs of the dress had to stand in for the rest of the tour. “Oil paintings are quite durable compared to textiles or works on paper,” Boutilier told me. On occasion, objects like the button blankets and some photographic prints, were swapped mid-tour for similar objects.

The show’s comprehensive catalogue serves as a delightful reminder of the captivating work these two women brought together. The exhibition fundamentally shifted the way I think about Canada’s visual heritage. Though I love decorative arts and prize crafts, I had unconsciously seen paintings and craft as telling different stories, instead of having the potential to create a unified narrative. Brought all together, the creative output represented in The Artist Herself, showed just how many women wanted to leave their mark. I began to wonder if, when it came to women’s art in Canada, we had just been too blind to see what was plainly in front of us.

Was there any possibility of a remount for Canada’s 150^th anniversary? Alas, the answer was a flat no. “Once The Artist Herself went up and was successful, other galleries did inquire about hosting,” Boutilier said. But by then it was too late. No additional galleries could be added. “Private collectors often don’t want to part with their pieces for more than a year,” Bruce added. “That’s why we felt it was important to have a catalogue. So there would be some sort of record.” A virtual website, which could promote the whole of the exhibit, was, unfortunately, too expensive to produce.

As for their future plans, both Boutilier and Bruce are looking forward to collaborating again. “There are so many strands that we can take forward from this show, ideas we can riff on,” said Boutilier. I agree. As much as I wish that all Canadians could have seen this stunning show, I am looking forward to what these two remarkable curators will come up with next.

In the last two years, Sabina Sakoh has exhibited alongside international art luminaries Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz, and Sigmar Polke. Sakoh’s debut outing at New York’s esteemed Armory Show resulted in the sale of her painting December 2014 to a California collector. Not too bad for a German painter who is a relative newcomer to this side of the Atlantic; only a scant six months before the Armory show, she had her North American debut at Miami’s legendary Art Basel.

Better known in Europe and in Asia, she has been featured not once but twice in the prestigious fine art magazine Art Investor, and her work has appeared in major solo and group shows in Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, Seoul, and Bejing. Guido Westerwelle, the highly respected former German Foreign Minister, was a major fan and placed her painting titled February 2012, over his desk. Her focus on democracy resonated with Westerwelle, and he had planned to place her works in German foreign offices worldwide when he suddenly passed away earlier this year.

Discovering new artists is always thrilling and on a recent trip to Germany, I couldn’t help but be seduced by Sakoh’s large scale, dramatic canvases, which I saw at her studio. Her style is rife with intriguing dualities: it is romantic yet naturalistic, contemporary but anchored by classical elements. Sakoh possesses formidable technical skills and marries high realism with dreamlike, almost abstract landscapes that her subjects occupy.

After meeting her socially, I was invited to come to her studio for a sneak peak of her new show, Democracy on Air, which goes up this September in Munich. Her studio is located in Kistlerhof Studios, a vast complex of buildings that provides space to some of Munich’s visual artists, animators and tech developers. The sheer scale of the complex makes it resemble a Hollywood lot, and is a reminder of the considerable support Germany gives its artists. After finally locating the correct building, I rode a freight elevator to the second floor and wandered past the studios of graphic designers and other artists. When I found Sabina in her studio, she was hard at work, putting the finishing touches on one of her 16 canvases for her upcoming exhibit, which opens September 9.

“I’ve been obsessed with the concepts of freedom and democracy for several years now,” she told me. “And I keep returning to this theme as the subject matter for my work.” She attributes this focus in part to having grown up in the Western half of a divided Germany, her childhood and adolescence marked by the fact that one half of the society was free and the other yearned to be. Another huge factor was the close relationship she had with her grandfather, Günther Strupp, also an artist. He had not only a profound influence on her artistic development but also on her worldview. “My grandfather suffered persecution at the hands of the Nazis. First he was interned at the Kemna Concentration camp and then a few years later, he was rounded up by the Gestapo and held at Stadelheim Prison because he was suspected of being part of an attempt on Hitler’s life. He was about to be executed when the Allied forces liberated the prison and saved his life. His experiences instilled in me not only a deep belief in the value of liberty but also a tremendous fear in the danger of tyranny.”

Sakoh’s new works feature individuals floating or isolated in a surreal space but all are unified by visual references from the French Revolution, images taken from the paintings of Delacroix and Gericault. “Freedom was fought for over the course of centuries, culminating in the French Revolution,” Sakoh said as we sat down in her studio sofa, surrounded by drying canvases. “But freedom is not just a historic accomplishment, an idea that exists only in books. It is something that we must fight for every day.” She pauses as if trying to find the exact words she wants in English. “Freedom is mankind’s major achievement. As artists we have a particular responsibility. Art requires freedom and freedom needs art.”

Michael Schultz, Sakoh’s dealer, underscored the uniqueness of her perspective. “What first attracted me to Sabina’s work was the political background of her artworks,” he told me in an email. “In every single painting she transforms current political tragedies into the time of revolution in the 18th century. These leaps in time are for me both exciting and stimulating. For me, Sabina Sakoh is one of the most authentic artists I have ever met.”

Although she mixes classical imagery with more contemporary visual allusions, she sometimes, as in the case of The Raft Number 8, places herself in the frame. Other times she uses her friends or their children as models. This mix of past and present is critical for her. “Today many of us forget what freedom actually means. We allow our feelings to be dulled by a need to conform, or by the relentless demands from a consumer society which focuses our attention on the need to acquire, making it a ‘virtue’ above all others.”

There can be no doubt about the urgency of Sakoh’s commitment to her themes. As I was leaving, by way of goodbye she gazed at me intensely and warned. “We must engage in a dialogue with history. We cannot allow our hard-won humanitarian values to be eradicated or our freedom will be destroyed”.

Democracy on Air opens September 9 at Galerie Filser Gräf, Munich and can be seen until October 14. Michael Schultz is also bringing her new work to this year’s Armory Show in NYC, and also to Art Basel Miami and other international art fairs. Additionally, he has plans for an exhibit in Los Angeles in 2018.

Samples of Sakoh’s work can also be seen on her website or at Galerie Michael Schultz.

In September 1998, while directing my first feature-length documentary, Just Watch Me,a film about the impact of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau‘s vision of a bilingual nation as seen through the lives of eight Gen Xers, I had the opportunity to travel to the Eastern Arctic city of Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut. The trip from Toronto was and remains more expensive than a trip to Tokyo. That is a shame because it means that it’s easier for Canadians to travel to Japan than to go to our own far North, which as I discovered, is a place like no other.

The distance from Toronto to Iqaluit is 2,337 km (1452 miles). First I flew to Ottawa where I had to change planes before continuing almost due north. The second plane had a bulkhead halfway down: the front half held passengers and the back half cargo. Almost everything had to be flown in: lumber, groceries, medicine and office supplies. The flight from Ottawa to Iqaluit took three hours. Looking out the window midway, I watched as we passed north of the tree line, a feature, which had until then only existed as a mythical demarcation point in my geography texts.

I landed on the evening of Friday September 11, 1998. I remember the date very well because it was the same day that the Starr Report, the wide ranging investigation into then President Bill Clinton by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, was released. Looking out the window of my small hotel room and watching the news, I was struck by how remote such events seemed. Though Iqaluit shares the same time zone as Washington, it is worlds apart. Another interesting feature of the city that I was to discover, is that because of its location near the pole, Iqaluit has crystal clear radio reception from around world. Detroit radio was very popular.

Formerly known as Frobisher Bay, Iqaluit is the only city in Nunavut. In 1998, it had a population of around 4,185. Today Iqaluit has grown to 6,699. The population of Nunavut itself is only 31,906, which seems very small considering the vastness of its territory: at 750,000 km² (680,000 sq. mi.), Nunavut is equivalent in size to Western Europe. Formerly part of the Northwest Territories, following years of discussion and consultation, the decision had been made to divide that territory in two. As the eastern Arctic territory of Nunavut was set to officially launch in the spring of 1999, my trip coincided with a large building boom and great excitement as new government offices and agencies were being established.

In early December 1998, I returned to Iqaluit with the crew to film an interview with crown attorney Doug Garson, whose efforts to become bilingual had led him from Manitoba to Quebec and ultimately to Iqaluit where he fell in love with and married an Inuit woman. This time, the dramatic golden light and mild temperatures of September had given way to a bitter cold, the kind most of us only read about in books.

We had rented a truck only to discover that the heater was broken. After we got over our initial shock, we realized that this was a blessing in disguise: the camera would not have tolerated the constant shifting between the extreme cold we were shooting in and the warmth of a heated truck and we would have lost a lot of valuable time waiting for it to adjust. Even when we filmed inside an unheated hockey arena, it took over an hour for the camera to warm up enough to film. Another major problem was the camera batteries, which drained rapidly in the cold.

One of the key visual components of the film were sunrises which we filmed in various locations across Canada. All were stunning but I can honestly say that the dawn I experienced in Iqaluit was one of the most magnificent I have ever seen. In the far north, it takes the winter sun a long time to rise over the horizon. The sun rose slowly and never truly crested. Until it set at around 3 p.m., the daylight resembled what we call ‘magic hour’ – soft coral, pink hues lit the town all day long. It was astonishing and extraordinarily beautiful.

When filming was completed and before the plane departed, we wanted to go dogsledding and see how an igloo was built. We were all pretty disappointed that we had arrived too early in the season and there wasn’t enough snow yet. It is hard to know when I will have the opportunity to return but I will definitely time it so that I can do both of those things and more. Visiting the Nunavut Tourism site, I see that there are many wonderful and unique adventures still to be had in Canada’s far north. Now if only, they could do something about the price of those airfares!

Marc Mayer has big plans for Canada’s sesquicentennial; he has committed to a complete redesign, reinstallation, and reinterpretation of the permanent Canadian and Indigenous collections at the National Gallery. As of May 2017, the now two separate collections shall be one.

“We have two art histories in Canada: Indigenous art, which goes back thousands of years, and Canadian art that begins only a few hundred years ago,” Marc explained to me as I caught up with him over lunch on a recent trip to Ottawa. “They are distinct but parallel stories of resilience, survival, interaction and transformation. And they have converged today in significant ways.”

By merging the galleries, Mayer believes that it will be easier to follow the two stories. “We will be able to more effectively show how they both evolve in relation to one another in a way that may help us understand our history, warts and all. And from a different perspective, it will also help situate the present moment. We can’t presume to tell the story of art in Canada by pretending that its oldest continuous cultures are not integral to the story and are incapable of making exceptional objects. That makes no sense!”

Mayer has been thinking about the problematic definitions of Canadian and Indigenous art for some time. “It has not been helpful to separate Indigenous Canadian art from the art of the settler communities. My predecessor understood that and a temporary approach was taken with a project called Art of this Land,” he said, taking a moment to reflect. “But by 2017, it’s time to commit to inclusion in a permanent and systematic way.”

Mayer has come to a more complex understanding of our history. “When you really look, you see that Indigenous people and the Europeans who settled here constantly interacted from the moment of contact, whether through trade, diplomacy or intermarriage. Canada’s aboriginal population was not hiding in the woods, oblivious to the strangers. They were in the towns trading, negotiating, and attempting to establish reasonable boundaries and the terms of collaboration. As much as our European ancestors resisted the idea, and too many still do, the aboriginal peoples of Canada and their cultures have always been, and will always be fundamental to the notion of Canadian identity.”

For Mayer, this question of how to best represent Indigenous art and Canadian art was the beginning of a voyage of discovery. “I began to question why do we tell these stories of art in separate galleries, for that matter in separate museums? There may be good, practical reasons to separate these different cultures from each other. But I believe there are equally good reasons not to. Especially in the case of an art museum where the emphasis is on the celebration of exceptional objects.”

Having headed up major galleries in New York, Paris, Toronto and Montreal before coming to Ottawa in 2009, Mayer knew that to successfully combine the National Gallery’s Indigenous art and Canadian art collections, collaboration would be critical. He opened up a dialogue with the curators of the two galleries and they set to work on developing an ambitious new plan.

This meant that everything was on the table, including the types of material that get displayed. “We concluded that it was important to get rid of the old-fashioned media and cultural segregations. So you are going to see what some call ethnographic material as well as photographs displayed alongside more traditional Western-style art objects. We are going to bring in a canoe, for example, and other symbolically powerful artifacts that help explain Canadian art history, things that you don’t normally associate with an art gallery.”

Mayer and his team also came to the conclusion that a complete redesign and reinstallation of the two galleries would be required. They commissioned internationally renowned museum designer Adrien Gardére, who was responsible for Toronto’s new Aga Khan Museum and other museums worldwide. “Adrien is one of the most sophisticated designers I have ever worked with. We have learned a lot from him,” said Mayer.

Part of what the team wrestled with is the tension inherent between the placement of art in the galleries. “Architecture should be of service to objects and not the other way around,” explained Mayer. “Rather than placing a painting in a room because that’s the only place it fits, we decided to open up the space and have floating walls. This will give us more freedom to tell the story the way in needs to be told.”

The new gallery will feel lighter and brighter, with the floors a paler hue and the rooms replete with new LED lighting, which allows for greater control as well as reducing energy use. The gallery is installing all new vitrines with a much finer glass, so viewers will be able to see through them unencumbered by distracting reflections and solid plinths.

Passionate about his work, Marc takes his responsibility for stewarding the past with the utmost seriousness. “Doctors take a Hippocratic oath and museum curators are like that too,” Mayer told me. “We see ourselves as stewards of the objects and we are obsessively loyal to them. No matter what culture made them, these objects have dignity, meaning, and power. Therefore, we want to make really sure that the way they are installed empowers them further.” To this end, Marc and his team are consulting with Indigenous experts on which objects should be included, how to display them correctly, and how to talk about them. The new signage will be in English, French and in the language of the objects’ makers. “For example, if a work of art was made by a Cree artist, the label will also be written in Cree,” said Mayer.

Mayer has also decided to break with traditional chronologies. The first room visitors enter will mix both historic and contemporary Indigenous works. “It’s important that we show that these ancient Canadian cultures are far from dead. In fact, they are thriving.” By showing the past and present together, Marc is taking another bold move. “This is very unusual and I hope it will provoke visitors into a new appreciation and understanding of not only First Nation art and artists but also the Canadian legacy.”

The National Gallery has a strong Canadian collection, but in the short term, to properly tell the story, material will have to be borrowed. “We are frantically sending out loan requests to the world. We don’t have much of a collection of Indigenous historical art. For example, our collection of Inuit art is only strong after 1950. Anything before that will have to come from other collections,” he confessed. “Also Metis flower beadwork. We own the beadwork-like painting by Christie Belcourt that couturier Valentino made famous but we haven’t collected actual Métis beadwork. It will take us years to build up that aspect of the collection.”

Looking to the future, Mayer sees an opportunity to develop longer-term relationships. “A lot of material held by Canadian and foreign museums and galleries is sitting in storage due to lack of display space and also for conservation reasons. To solve our problem, we are working on building continuing relationships with different collections. In addition, we will slowly acquire exceptional things as they appear.”

The National Gallery’s newly renamed Canadian and Indigenous Galleries are only big enough to take viewers to about 1967. Consequently, for 2017, the curators for the Contemporary, Indigenous, and Photographs collections are cooperating on a temporary exhibition that will take visitors from 1967 to today.

With construction underway and staff working overtime, Marc is busy on the book that will accompany the exhibition. “It’s exciting to explore the grand themes of Canada’s fascinating art histories,” he said. “And you know, in many ways, it’s a thrilling and optimistic story, though for Indigenous artists, there were some long and very dark periods. We live in a different time now. Canada is no longer a European colony and institutionalized racism has subsided considerably. Our brilliantly diverse visual artists attest to our strength as a society every day. And they also alert us to the work that still remains to be done”

The new Canadian and Indigenous Galleries will open late May 2017.

La Maison de la littérature is an understated surprise. It is a library but not a library, a gallery but not only a gallery, a performance space sometimes but not always. Quebec’s newest attraction is a cultural workshop, a literary hub, a library and a gallery all rolled into one. La Maison de la littérature is a boundary defying, gorgeous new cultural hotspot that is redefining what it means to promote and love literature and the eyes of the world are already upon it.

La Maison only opened in October last year and has already attracted over 85,000 visitors. Director Bernard Gilbert couldn’t be happier. “Since we were inventing a new concept, we didn’t want to set overly optimistic goals for attendance. And we have done so much better than we ever thought we would.”

I met Bernard on a recent visit to Quebec City and his pride in the new cultural space is evident. “When I was young, I wanted to be a famous writer,” he told me. He started writing poetry in his teens and is now a published poet and author of three novels. Along the way he discovered that he also had a talent as a cultural impresario. His accomplishments are many including managing Theatre Periscope, founding and managing the Carrefour international de théâtre festival and working for 10 years alongside renowned director Robert Lepage on his opera projects, such as the epic Metropolitan Opera New York production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

Gilbert long envisioned creating a home for Quebec literature. In 2004, the L’Institut Canadien de Québec asked him to prepare a report on the feasibility of creating a cultural centre dedicated to Quebec literature. L’Institut Canadien was founded in 1848 expressly to provide French Canadians with libraries and other educational undertakings and continues to this day to run Quebec City’s library system. It took a decade after Gilbert submitted his original report for funding to be raised and construction started, and he was tapped to be La Maison’s inaugural director.

Seeking a sight that would service both residents and tourists alike, La Maison took over the Wesley Temple, a historic Methodist church located in the heart of the old city. Since the mid-1940s, L’Institut Canadien had used it as a performing arts space as well as a library. But by the late 1990s, the performing arts venue had closed. Gilbert inherited a well known and loved site but one that required massive renovations. The Montreal-based firm Chevalier Morales Architects won the commission  and designed a complex so beautiful that, even before it opened, they received the prestigious Award of Excellence from Canadian Architect.

Both soaring and intimate, modern and old, the new space houses a gallery, café, stage, recording studio, offices for the various writers in residence, and a functioning library. “We are inside an old temple,” said Gilbert. “But we never thought of calling it a temple. It was always a house. People talk about how the building, the space makes them feel welcomed, invited inside. That’s because we are a family.” And indeed when I visited, I felt so welcome that, were I to live in Quebec City, it would be my second home. Even on a rainy, grey day, La Maison was filled with light and its beautifully designed interiors beckoned me.

“All of our staff have deep roots in the literary community. All are passionate and love what they do,” explained Gilbert. And it shows. The whole of the 25,000 piece collection, which includes books, films, music, is available to borrow. Carefully curated selections are strategically placed on tables scatted throughout, enticing visitors to take time to browse on the comfy couches available in the reading room. Images from a Quebecois film play on a large screen overhead, while there is an imaginative literary exhibit based on found photos in the hall below, as well as a permanent exhibit celebrating famous Quebec writers.

The vision for La Maison is not centered on artifacts but rather on generating a living, breathing, and dynamic literary culture. “We decided not to focus on first editions – there are other collections that already do to that. Instead, we are concentrating on programming and community engagement,” said Gilbert. “We start with literature and then ask ourselves how do we create as many things as possible around it? Everything is new here so we have to experiment. We need to take risks.”

For Gilbert and his team this has resulted in an extraordinary range of programming including five residency programs, hip hop, haiku, and slam poetry competitions, open mike nights, reading clubs, and learn to write workshops. La Maison also provides onsite workspace for a group of comic book writers and designers, believing that they will amplify their creative output by sharing space rather than working in isolation. And if that isn’t enough, Gilbert’s mandate includes running Quebec City’s 10-day literary festival, Québec en toutes lettres, which takes place at the end of September every year. As the general and artistic director of both La Maison and the literary festival, he is able to fully integrate all aspects of his vision for literature as a creative and cultural driver for the city and the region.

News of this unique cultural hub has already travelled far and wide and delegations have come to visit from France, Belgium, and Switzerland. Researchers from the University of Lorraine in Metz are studying and writing about the progress of La Maison, with a special interest in the residency program that hosts around 15 writers and artists a year. All of this makes Gilbert very proud. “To be frank, the French are a little jealous. They don’t have anything like this,” he told me. “But so are folks in Montreal. So we must be doing something right!”

As for the future, Gilbert has big plans. Within the next three to five years, he would like to launch a translation program so that Quebec literature can travel into other markets and English Canadian works can be translated into French at home. “Right now the vast majority of books that are translated into French are done in France. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a Canadian book, like Joseph Boyden’s Orenda would be translated here?” Gilbert believes that translation is a wonderful way to build cultural relationships. “In most cases translation is the only way to share literature from one culture to the other,” he explained. “And it allows writers writing in different languages to communicate with one another which I think is vital.”

Another goal is to cultivate relationships with other successful Canadian literary organizations, like Toronto’s International Festival of Authors and the Banff Centre’s Literary Arts Program in Alberta. He is also optimistic about getting CBC and Radio-Canada, who both promote English and French Canadian literature in their own markets, to do more linguistic cross promotion.

But for the time being, for today, he is content to let the world come to him. “We had a tough but very rewarding time during the last year. We accomplished a lot in such a short space of time,” Bernard recalls. “I love my job. I love my team. I still can’t get over how lucky we are. The concept, the building is unique. And since La Maison is part of the Quebec City public library network, it will be open for business for a long time.”

If you are visiting this summer, La Maison is offering free screenings of films by directors from Quebec as well tours of the building hosted in French and English. And lovers of literature can also explore Promenade des écrivains. These 2-hour walking tours feature significant sites for Quebec writers or writers who have written about or been to Quebec including Willa Cather, Albert Camus, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Stefan Zweig, Herman Melville and others.

Home is where the heart is. Or so they say. For migrants and refugees home is something left behind, something that must be recreated anew. A process that is painful and frightening. And also one of profound optimism. It is an expression of the hope and belief in the ability to create a better life.

Today there are 60 million refugees worldwide and an even greater number of economic migrants. A number too vast to fathom. It represents almost twice as many people as live in Canada. These men, women and children are on the move, in camps, and dispersed. They have lost everything. And must find a way to rebuild.

Some of the luckiest come to Canada. A few weeks ago I was invited to an exquisite and moving exhibition at York University. A New Home, A New Opportunity is an interdisciplinary student led show. The students are all first and second generation Canadians, who after seeing the plight of Syrian refugees in the news, decided to personalize the refugee and migration experience. To literally put a face on it. So with the help of Professor Megan Davies, they curated a show which features treasured objects that both express their new Canadian identity and memories of a life left behind.

One of the student organizers, Sumaya Abdullahi believes that the objects both represent the diversity of York student’s backgrounds and provide relatable talking points for other students. “This project is very personal to each and everyone of us, as our parents, grandparents and/or ancestors have either migrated/immigrated or sought refuge in Canada. There is not a single story that represents us all.”

On the day I visited, I was lucky enough to meet the students featured below.

Millicent’s mother gave her gold hoop earrings to remind her of Ghana, where her parents came from and the hardships they endured to provide a better life for her and her siblings. The earrings, which she is wearing, remind her of what they went through on her behalf. “If you truly want something never give up. If my parents had given up I cannot say I would actually be here at York University.”

Daniel’s father left post-war Italy with his parents in search of a better life in Toronto. This Cornicello or Little Horn pendant is considered a good luck charm in Italy. “It was given to me by my dad who wanted to remind me where I came from and the journey my parents went through. It protects the wearer form the evil eye.”

Colleen’s mom came from Jamaica. When she arrived in Toronto, she met a woman on a TTC bus and the two became such fast friends, she became Colleen’s God Mother and gave her this doll. “When you have to leave your family behind, and then you meet someone from back home, it is almost like meeting your family.”

For Maryam,  simple, delicious green raisins are precious. “The raisins are given to guests when they come into your home. They allow migrants and refugees to feel connected to a larger network of Afghan families.”

Due to the strong positive response from her fellow students, Sumaya plans to mount the exhibit again in the fall, at the beginning of the new school year. “We would like to provide a pathway to tolerance and remind others of the importance and benefits of the Canadian mosaic.” She is ambitious and dreams of taking the show off campus and on road.

The 8-minute documentary that accompanies the exhibition features York students who have immigrated to Canada. It was produced in collaboration with Yorks Film Department.

When Emily Antze (seated above) heard about the student’s exhibition, she felt it was a natural fit with the work York University’s Centre for Refugee Studies. York has a student campus in Dabaab, the largest refugee camps in the world – providing shelter to 350,000 people. Last fall 59 Dabaab students received a York University Certificate of Completion in Educational Studies. They are the first graduates of a unique program designed to take post-secondary education to where refugees live. Thee students were taught both online and in person by members of York’s Faculty of Education. The new certificate program is part of the Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER) project.

Nickelback is from Hanna, Alberta. But I only discovered that when I made the road trip. It was the tale of the ancient roundhouse that piqued my interest. Darryl was hanging art in my office in Medicine Hat and we got to talking. Having recently moved, he wistfully recalled life in Hanna, his hometown. “It has the last remaining rural roundhouse in the west,” he told me proudly. I love old architecture and abandoned buildings, so I convinced a friend that we had to go and see this historic structure. On the first spring day, we hit to road to see what this slice of Canadiana had to offer.

Say Alberta and most people think of oil or cattle. I think of trains. The construction of the railroad was integral to settling the west and uniting the county. Most western cities and towns owe their existence to the railroad – so much so in the case of Hanna that the town was named after the railroad executive, David Blythe Hanna.

Hanna was an important enough stop on the CN line that a roundhouse was constructed. When engines were in need of repair or service, crews placed the cars on turntables, which allowed them to be driven into the large circular or semicircular structure built around them. Hence the name ‘roundhouse’.

Travelling by back roads, we passed through some rolling countryside. But as we reached Hanna, the topography dramatically changed. Hanna is flat. Prairie flat. You can see out for miles across the prairie grasses. Leaving the highway, we passed a Welcome to Hanna sign, which paid tribute to its most famous citizens. A stampede ground lies at the outskirts and next to it is a lovely little pioneer village, which we explored though the buildings were closed until the Victoria Day weekend. I am a sucker for pioneer villages and this one is a gem.

Hanna itself is extremely small. Around 2,500 inhabitants give or take. We drove up to the roundhouse, which is in a field a little outside of town. Proudly standing there in all its ‘not yet restored’ glory, I can only imagine that this must have been a pretty impressive building at one time. Built in 1913 by Canadian Northern Railroad, now there was a tree overshadowing the turntable and the tracks just disappear into the vanishing point on the horizon. Old railroad ties were stacked at one end.

I had some friends from university who in summer went out to work on the CPR laying track. They would have to get up at 2 or 3 a.m. and work until around noon when the steel, heated by the sun, could no longer be handled. Isolated and physically grueling, it was not for the faint of heart. They really looked forward to heading into town on their days off. No doubt the railway crew shared this feeling when they arrived in Hanna. Railway men would get off and stay in nearby hotels, which you can still see from the site.

We approached the building and entered through one of the large doors. The vast interior space is like a cathedral for the age of the railroad. There is a hall for locomotive bays for 10 engines and a large room on the other side that now had a few picnic tables.

When construction on the roundhouse began in June 1913, hundreds of men arrived in town to work on ballasting the track. They must have worked fast – the fall harvest was shipped out by rail. By November 13 the first passenger train from the east arrived and the local newspaper reported that almost everyone in Hanna went to the station to welcome it. The paper also noted a short four months later that the stagecoach had completed its final trip into town.

Though one wing has been demolished, miraculously most of the building is still standing. Over the years, various uses have been found for it, including as a Greyhound Bus Depot and a place to sell livestock. Now, a team of dedicated and passionate train loving volunteers and local boosters are trying to turn this into a viable cultural, educational, and party space. At 9500 sq. ft., you could throw one hell of a party.

“We have a lot on the go,” Sandra Beaudoin, President and Founder of the Hanna Roundhouse Society informed me when I reached out to her. The roundhouse received provincial historic designation in 2015, an important first step. Especially considering that its sister roundhouse in Biggar, Saskatchewan was torn down last year over the objection of preservationists. “A significant long-term objective for us is to get the turntable functional.” In the meantime the Society is hoping to have heritage work done on the main buildings, including much needed roof repair, work on the original windows and doors, and, importantly, securing it from vandals and robbers whose presence is an ongoing problem. The site itself is almost nine acres in size so this is no small undertaking. Money will have to be raised. Lots of it. “We are in the process of getting our information package together for investors to help us with the restoration”. Who knows maybe the hometown heros will do a fundraising concert – how ‘bout it Nickelback?

Having stood for over 100 years, it’s hard to imagine what this weather beaten prairie edifice will look like 100 years hence. As an important part of our architectural legacy, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Sandra and her Society will find a vibrant new use that pays tribute to the roundhouse’s historic past. For more information about visiting, special events or donating, visit the Hanna Roundhouse Society website or their Facebook page.

If sex sells, crime can pay. At least when it comes to creating a popular exhibit. Returning from visiting friends last summer, I pulled into the Dufferin County Museum to check out a travelling show, Arresting Images: Mug Shots from The OPP Museum. Stripped of the expansive criminal narrative of a Deadwood or Sherlock Holmes, this compelling collection of late 19^th century mug shots are riveting nonetheless. Amazingly, the Ontario Provincial Police have the oldest known collection of mug shots in North America. More amazing still, these photos were found completely by accident.

“Staff Superintendent Fred Blucher was cleaning out an old storage room and came across a large book of photographs,” OPP Strategic Communications Officer and former OPP Museum Curator Jeanie Tummon told me when I called her up to learn more about the show she put together. The place was Niagara Falls. The year 1965. The massive album contained close to 500 mug shots. “The Staff Superintendent knew he had stumbled across something unique,” Jeanie continued. “But it took a while to realize just how important his find was.”

Once funds were raised to research and archive the collection, Jeanie discovered that the cache had real historic significance. “Places like the Kingston Penitentiary have mug shots dating back to the early 20^th century but they were taken after the criminals had been processed. So their heads were already shaved and they were in prison garb. What makes the OPP’s find so special is that most of the images were taken at the time of arrest or following sentencing. The people in our collection still have a lot of personality.”

True that. The direct gaze of these criminals sparked my imagination. I considered various scenarios that might have led each to a life of crime and how those crimes had been enacted. Were the accused poor and desperate? Or simply horrible people? Or poor, desperate and horrible? Much as you want to, you just can’t know.

The term mug shot is derived from slang for face, which is sort of obvious when you think about it. The practice began in 1841 when the Paris Police recognized that the newly invented medium of photography could aid in identifying criminals. Police forces began to share images, particularly at border crossings. This may be the reason why the Ontario Police (early forebears of the Ontario Provincial Police) in Niagara Falls had such a variety and number of photographs. It may be also because it was an early administrative hub. They had received mug shots from various Ontario and from New York State police forces, and other private detective agencies.

In viewing the collection, it is clear that the art of the mug shot differed from place to place and evolved over time. Back in the day, there was little stylistic uniformity and few if any rules. With the use of soft lighting and props such as elegant furniture, many images in the collection look like there were taken in a photographer’s studio and not in the local police station. Jeanie confirmed that this was the case.

The Bertillon System of Criminal Identification, which specified that frontal and profile photos should be taken, had not yet been uniformly adopted. As a result subjects posed in all sorts of ways. One criminal posed with his gun. Many wear hats which, given the formality of late 19th century dress, makes the subject look quite fashionable and even fetching. I suspect for many of those charged, this may have been the only photograph taken in their life, and it seems that they made the most of the opportunity. In one case, Jeanie explained, the police simply used a portrait that a relatives had supplied.

Almost as intimate as the photos themselves are the handwritten notes recorded by various arresting or processing officers. Most used a rudimentary data collection form though in some cases the officers just wrote on a blank sheet of paper. The collection of vital statistics was also in its infancy and so the types of data recorded varied greatly. Some records indicate birthmarks, particularism of teeth, or other distinguishing marks. Others reveal whether the accused could read or write. Many included the criminal’s rap sheet.

The naming of crimes also appears to be a moving target. George Dutin was not just a horse thief but a ‘Notorious Horse Thief”. Joseph Patterson was accused of “Burglary and Sneak”. Lillie Williams’ crime was “Suspicion”- begging the question of what? And George Henry Appley’s report reads, “Is an opium eater”. “John Meyer alias McLane”, was charged with “con and bunco”. Bunco, I confess, I had never heard of; it turns out to be “a swindle in which an unsuspecting person is cheated; a confidence game”. Punishments, when recorded, were equally intriguing with one man being simply “sentenced to leave town”.

Of all the photos in the room, it was 32 year old Rebecca Shanley’s that I found the most intriguing. In 1888, she was charged with “elopement” but in absentia. A married woman and a mother, she ran off with another man, taking her daughter with her. Rebecca’s husband, suspecting that he had been abandoned for a Mr. Fuller, went to the police. They, in turn circulated Rebecca’s photo and details about her, including that she was a “remarkable woman”. We only know most of this because during the course of her research, Jeanie uncovered a New York Times article about her. It is, however, unknown whether she and her daughter were ever found.

Apparently I am not alone in loving this exhibit. The Ontario Museum Association bestowed on it an Award of Excellence. Since 2009 it has drawn crowds from around the province and across the country. This year, Arresting Images can be seen at Welland Historical Museum until the end of May. In June, it moves to Port Perry where it can be seen until December at the Lennox & Addington County Museum & Archives. Catch it while you can!