thank you for inviting me to present I’m
going to talk to you about the art
Canada Institute which is an
organization that I founded to promote
Canadian art history research and
education what I wanted to do was make
Canadian art history a contemporary
conversation why did I want to do this I
wanted to bring Canadian art history
into the 21st century
I wanted to democratize Canadian art
history I wanted to make art history and
artists accessible to everyone what I
have done over the last three years
since founding the art Canada Institute
is to create a web-based access to
Canadian art and so what I’m going to
talk to you about is about art in the
digital age in the 21st century and what
it means to look at art now and what the
museum it means in the 21st century on
the art candidate Institute site there
are online exhibitions like this one
about William not men a wonderful
Montreal 19th century photographer so
there’s an exhibition about his work on
our website there are online exhibitions
that connect contemporary artists to
those in art history who influenced them
on our website there are comments from
well-known Canadians like dr. Samantha
Nutt talking about what matters to her
about Canadian art history and why here
what we’re looking at is is a work that
she’s talking about by the wonderful
photographer Canadian photographer
Edward Burtynsky
on the art Canada Institute’s website we
have stories from individuals who have
been critical to creating the history of
Canadian art talking about the their
experiences and what it has meant to
build the country’s visual arts
landscape
we have spotlights featuring Canadian
artists and their most important works
we have essays that bring to Canadians
the story of the most important
paintings by the country’s leading
scholars and museum professionals the
art Canada Institute started with a
vision for creating online digital art
books available in both French and
English and I’m going to talk to you a
bit about why this vision came to me and
it’s particularly appropriate following
Alexandra’s talk about seven years ago I
went back to University and I completed
a PhD in art history and it was a great
experience going back to university as a
mature student because I noticed
something I noticed that most students
most of my peer group at university they
were not going to the library to find
their research and often they weren’t
even going to a museum to look at art
and this what we’re looking at on screen
now is is a picture of the National
Gallery of Canada and you’ll notice
something it is particularly empty
something else that became very apparent
to me is that the comfort level that
many people have with going to museums
is is not is not a comfort level in fact
in fact there is a distance between
people’s entry point and accessibility
to art and then getting into a museum
and and I started thinking about why is
this the case and and to understand why
this isn’t the case we have to look a
bit into history and the museum and art
galleries in fact as we know them
there’s something that are fairly new in
history they only really started coming
into the public in about the 18th
century and this is a very early museum
and the museum’s actually originated
from individual usually royalty nobility
from
private collections that people had that
they would store stuff in cases like
what you’re seeing here here’s another
example of an early private Museum in
the Netherlands but the thing is when
museums then became open to the public
largely happened after the French
Revolution the vision of the museum was
something like this put up great work
and people will come which made a lot of
sense before the digital age but now if
you think about museums and if you think
about books the first place that one is
going to turn to learn about art in art
history
isn’t necessarily an art library of a
bricks-and-mortar LA art library or
going to an art museum which is not to
say that it’s not significant to go and
see art and to have access to art as a
matter of fact after the Second World
War the United Nations declared that art
is a fundamental human right but there
is an issue there is a bit of a crisis
that we have in Canada which is that
only 40 percent of Canadians actively
access their own bricks-and-mortar
museums and art galleries so I began to
think how can we change this how can we
start to look at art in an accelerated
age in a 21st century age one of the
things that I did was I looked up on
Google one of my favorite artists an
artist named Jack Chambers and you know
I found a jack chamber school a blog on
him but actually I was able to find next
to no research and reliable content on
him and this was a problem for me
because while I was doing my PhD I
started teaching at the University of
Toronto and every course that I taught I
wanted to make sure that I injected a
healthy dose of Canadian art history
into
any course that I was teaching and yet
when I went to the Internet it wasn’t
there when I went to the library’s
bricks and mortar libraries it wasn’t
there either now I’m happy to say if you
Google got Jack Chambers books one of
the first things you see is the art
Canada Institute and the book that we
have done on Jack chambers so back to
the museum for a moment this is a
traditional way that museums looked
siloed in their own independent space
and I started looking at thinking about
how did our landscape look when it came
to viewing art and it looked something
like this
on the one hand there were a group of
people called curators museum
professionals who worked in museums and
brought and tried to teach the public
about art then there were academics
university professors scholars who were
studying art and then in the third group
there was the public who was trying to
have some sort of access to art but I
knew from the statistics that this was
failing because people didn’t feel an
accessibility to art they didn’t feel a
comfort level around it so I decided to
come up with a new vision with the
vision called the art Canada Institute
where what I would do is I would draw
together museum professionals academics
and the public through presenting art
largely on a digital platform I went and
I approached over 50 of the country’s
leading museum professionals and art
historians people who amazingly had
never ever worked together and I said to
them how would you feel about creating
original content for the internet that
introduced a broad public audience to
Canadian art and its most important
thinkers creators innovators and the
response that I had was overwhelmingly
positive because really there was a
group
people all these names that you see on
screen who wanted to learn and wanted to
teach about Canadian art history but
they didn’t know how to bring it to a
broad public audience through the
internet and in large part what I did
I’m not a tech innovator I am not a
coder much like Alexandra before me I
had an idea and what I said is what I
can do is I can help bring your idea and
what I did know how to do is I did have
a strong background in graphic design I
had worked as a journalist as a
traditional book publisher a print book
publisher what I said to my colleagues
at museums and at universities I said
you know we’re in an age right now where
if you’re going to buy a house the first
place you’re going to look is on the
Internet if you’re going to see a film
the first place we’re going to look is
on the Internet if you’re going to go to
a restaurant the first place you’re
going to look is online we need to start
doing this for art and art history and
it’s it is incredible to believe that
this hadn’t really been done before but
simply it hadn’t hadn’t taken place and
so what I did was I created this program
called the Canadian online art book
project and since it was founded what we
have done is we have created 24 digital
books this has been since November 2013
books that are all available
simultaneously published in French and
English both on a desktop version a
mobile version a PDF version and all
this material is available for free so
in addition to founding this project
what I did was I went out and I found
donor support and I said to donors what
really matters is democratizing art for
Canadians making this subject accessible
because I explained it quite simply I
said that when I see my children
enter the word art into Google I want
what I want to come up is not a Vincent
van Gogh or Pablo Picasso or Salvador
Dali what I want to see is Joyce Weiland
I want to see Emily Carr I want to see
Tom Thomson I want to see Lauren Harris
I want everybody in this audience I want
all Canadians to know about their own
visual cultural heritage and so
thankfully I had a great enthusiastic
response from art historians and museum
professionals and I also had a very
strong response from donors who said I
really like this vision I believe in it
I want to support you traditionally most
print art books in Canada have had a
sale of about two thousand copies we
know at the art Canada Institute that
over three hundred thousand people use
our books regularly so what that means
is that regardless of people’s proximity
to a bricks-and-mortar museum regardless
of their level of knowledge of art
history and their expertise all
individuals are able to be part of the
conversation about Canadian art I’m
going to take you inside some of our
books and show you what they look like
every book was created not as a print
book that was then put on the Internet
I thought through the logistics of
looking at art with my team of great and
great team of editors art historians
thinkers and what we found is we knew
that when people wanted to learn about
art what they wanted to know about was
an artist biography about a key works of
an artist about the significance and
critical issues of art and so for every
book that we did we then followed this
similar format this is the title page of
our book on William not men the 19th
century Montreal photographer one can
either start reading it immediately or
one can download it as a PDF to to read
without internet access in every book
there’s a chapter heading that takes
the user through the biography of the
artist this is a visual of what an
interior page looks like in every spot
where there was a piece of language that
seemed to be what I would call art speak
we make available a pop-up definition of
those words again this is to make sure
that all have an accessibility that
people don’t start to read and think I
don’t understand this I’m going to go
off to a different site every book has
something called a key work section
where it’s essentially like an online
exhibition of looking at the artists
work and all one has to do is go through
10 to 15 key works to understand what an
artist life and work is about a style
and technique section to understand how
this artist is different and what makes
her work or his work so unique here’s a
look at the style into innovation that
William not men used we’re looking at a
glass plate negative that’s something
that is featured as part of the style
and technique section the significance
and critical issues of the artist simply
answering the question why does this
person matter why is this person
important to our cultural landscape as I
mentioned every book is available
simultaneously in French and this is
something that is also so critical when
looking at art in the 21st century
because Canadian art what has often
tended to happen is that there have been
very important artists in Quebec but the
translation of books about those artists
hasn’t happened to English so they
remained important artists in Quebec but
not in the rest of Canada every book has
the sources in resources section so one
is able to do further study and most
importantly and this has been a really
key innovation of the art Canada
Institute is that every book has a
section called
where to see which then links the reader
from the book to an institution and so
what the art Canada in
stitute is doing is we are actually
becoming a directory of where to see
Canadian art where to find Canadian art
around the world finally a key thing
that we do is we promote our authors
which traditionally actually it’s bit
academics and museum professionals have
not become rock stars so to speaks in
terms of the knowledge about their work
but this is bringing those individuals
into the 21st century into the
accelerated world of Museum and art
technology I wanted to show you another
book this is our Emily Carr book just so
you see how our format is similar from
book to book which is something that our
readers find very satisfying we have had
tremendous praise for our work the
director of the the National Gallery of
Canada said that the art Canada
Institute was the best news in Canadian
art in a long time that The Globe and
Mail had said we are breathing digital
life into Canadian art history MacLean
said that the contour content is
redefining the conversation about
Canadian art for 21st century audience
so we’re very very proud about where we
are going I want to conclude by going
back to where I started by saying
explaining to you that art really is a
fundamental human right and it is
something that should be accessible to
all but here is a quite amazing
statistic only 5% of public museum
collections is actually on view and on
display so if you go to the Art Gallery
of Ontario what you’re seeing is only 5%
most museum collections are actually
underneath the museum in vaults like
this one that this is a picture of a
museum vault and so where is the art
Canada Institute going where are we
moving in our direction we’re still in
nascent organization we’re moving away
from this model a model of put stuff out
there in a bricks and mortar institution
and people will come and we’re moving to
something like this building a huge
database of all of the works in Canadian
art
Canadian art history so that everybody
will be able to have access to the
conversation about Canadian art so
everybody feels comfortable with it and
so ultimately we all participate in what
is a fundamental human right thank you
[Applause]
going to talk to you about the art
Canada Institute which is an
organization that I founded to promote
Canadian art history research and
education what I wanted to do was make
Canadian art history a contemporary
conversation why did I want to do this I
wanted to bring Canadian art history
into the 21st century
I wanted to democratize Canadian art
history I wanted to make art history and
artists accessible to everyone what I
have done over the last three years
since founding the art Canada Institute
is to create a web-based access to
Canadian art and so what I’m going to
talk to you about is about art in the
digital age in the 21st century and what
it means to look at art now and what the
museum it means in the 21st century on
the art candidate Institute site there
are online exhibitions like this one
about William not men a wonderful
Montreal 19th century photographer so
there’s an exhibition about his work on
our website there are online exhibitions
that connect contemporary artists to
those in art history who influenced them
on our website there are comments from
well-known Canadians like dr. Samantha
Nutt talking about what matters to her
about Canadian art history and why here
what we’re looking at is is a work that
she’s talking about by the wonderful
photographer Canadian photographer
Edward Burtynsky
on the art Canada Institute’s website we
have stories from individuals who have
been critical to creating the history of
Canadian art talking about the their
experiences and what it has meant to
build the country’s visual arts
landscape
we have spotlights featuring Canadian
artists and their most important works
we have essays that bring to Canadians
the story of the most important
paintings by the country’s leading
scholars and museum professionals the
art Canada Institute started with a
vision for creating online digital art
books available in both French and
English and I’m going to talk to you a
bit about why this vision came to me and
it’s particularly appropriate following
Alexandra’s talk about seven years ago I
went back to University and I completed
a PhD in art history and it was a great
experience going back to university as a
mature student because I noticed
something I noticed that most students
most of my peer group at university they
were not going to the library to find
their research and often they weren’t
even going to a museum to look at art
and this what we’re looking at on screen
now is is a picture of the National
Gallery of Canada and you’ll notice
something it is particularly empty
something else that became very apparent
to me is that the comfort level that
many people have with going to museums
is is not is not a comfort level in fact
in fact there is a distance between
people’s entry point and accessibility
to art and then getting into a museum
and and I started thinking about why is
this the case and and to understand why
this isn’t the case we have to look a
bit into history and the museum and art
galleries in fact as we know them
there’s something that are fairly new in
history they only really started coming
into the public in about the 18th
century and this is a very early museum
and the museum’s actually originated
from individual usually royalty nobility
from
private collections that people had that
they would store stuff in cases like
what you’re seeing here here’s another
example of an early private Museum in
the Netherlands but the thing is when
museums then became open to the public
largely happened after the French
Revolution the vision of the museum was
something like this put up great work
and people will come which made a lot of
sense before the digital age but now if
you think about museums and if you think
about books the first place that one is
going to turn to learn about art in art
history
isn’t necessarily an art library of a
bricks-and-mortar LA art library or
going to an art museum which is not to
say that it’s not significant to go and
see art and to have access to art as a
matter of fact after the Second World
War the United Nations declared that art
is a fundamental human right but there
is an issue there is a bit of a crisis
that we have in Canada which is that
only 40 percent of Canadians actively
access their own bricks-and-mortar
museums and art galleries so I began to
think how can we change this how can we
start to look at art in an accelerated
age in a 21st century age one of the
things that I did was I looked up on
Google one of my favorite artists an
artist named Jack Chambers and you know
I found a jack chamber school a blog on
him but actually I was able to find next
to no research and reliable content on
him and this was a problem for me
because while I was doing my PhD I
started teaching at the University of
Toronto and every course that I taught I
wanted to make sure that I injected a
healthy dose of Canadian art history
into
any course that I was teaching and yet
when I went to the Internet it wasn’t
there when I went to the library’s
bricks and mortar libraries it wasn’t
there either now I’m happy to say if you
Google got Jack Chambers books one of
the first things you see is the art
Canada Institute and the book that we
have done on Jack chambers so back to
the museum for a moment this is a
traditional way that museums looked
siloed in their own independent space
and I started looking at thinking about
how did our landscape look when it came
to viewing art and it looked something
like this
on the one hand there were a group of
people called curators museum
professionals who worked in museums and
brought and tried to teach the public
about art then there were academics
university professors scholars who were
studying art and then in the third group
there was the public who was trying to
have some sort of access to art but I
knew from the statistics that this was
failing because people didn’t feel an
accessibility to art they didn’t feel a
comfort level around it so I decided to
come up with a new vision with the
vision called the art Canada Institute
where what I would do is I would draw
together museum professionals academics
and the public through presenting art
largely on a digital platform I went and
I approached over 50 of the country’s
leading museum professionals and art
historians people who amazingly had
never ever worked together and I said to
them how would you feel about creating
original content for the internet that
introduced a broad public audience to
Canadian art and its most important
thinkers creators innovators and the
response that I had was overwhelmingly
positive because really there was a
group
people all these names that you see on
screen who wanted to learn and wanted to
teach about Canadian art history but
they didn’t know how to bring it to a
broad public audience through the
internet and in large part what I did
I’m not a tech innovator I am not a
coder much like Alexandra before me I
had an idea and what I said is what I
can do is I can help bring your idea and
what I did know how to do is I did have
a strong background in graphic design I
had worked as a journalist as a
traditional book publisher a print book
publisher what I said to my colleagues
at museums and at universities I said
you know we’re in an age right now where
if you’re going to buy a house the first
place you’re going to look is on the
Internet if you’re going to see a film
the first place we’re going to look is
on the Internet if you’re going to go to
a restaurant the first place you’re
going to look is online we need to start
doing this for art and art history and
it’s it is incredible to believe that
this hadn’t really been done before but
simply it hadn’t hadn’t taken place and
so what I did was I created this program
called the Canadian online art book
project and since it was founded what we
have done is we have created 24 digital
books this has been since November 2013
books that are all available
simultaneously published in French and
English both on a desktop version a
mobile version a PDF version and all
this material is available for free so
in addition to founding this project
what I did was I went out and I found
donor support and I said to donors what
really matters is democratizing art for
Canadians making this subject accessible
because I explained it quite simply I
said that when I see my children
enter the word art into Google I want
what I want to come up is not a Vincent
van Gogh or Pablo Picasso or Salvador
Dali what I want to see is Joyce Weiland
I want to see Emily Carr I want to see
Tom Thomson I want to see Lauren Harris
I want everybody in this audience I want
all Canadians to know about their own
visual cultural heritage and so
thankfully I had a great enthusiastic
response from art historians and museum
professionals and I also had a very
strong response from donors who said I
really like this vision I believe in it
I want to support you traditionally most
print art books in Canada have had a
sale of about two thousand copies we
know at the art Canada Institute that
over three hundred thousand people use
our books regularly so what that means
is that regardless of people’s proximity
to a bricks-and-mortar museum regardless
of their level of knowledge of art
history and their expertise all
individuals are able to be part of the
conversation about Canadian art I’m
going to take you inside some of our
books and show you what they look like
every book was created not as a print
book that was then put on the Internet
I thought through the logistics of
looking at art with my team of great and
great team of editors art historians
thinkers and what we found is we knew
that when people wanted to learn about
art what they wanted to know about was
an artist biography about a key works of
an artist about the significance and
critical issues of art and so for every
book that we did we then followed this
similar format this is the title page of
our book on William not men the 19th
century Montreal photographer one can
either start reading it immediately or
one can download it as a PDF to to read
without internet access in every book
there’s a chapter heading that takes
the user through the biography of the
artist this is a visual of what an
interior page looks like in every spot
where there was a piece of language that
seemed to be what I would call art speak
we make available a pop-up definition of
those words again this is to make sure
that all have an accessibility that
people don’t start to read and think I
don’t understand this I’m going to go
off to a different site every book has
something called a key work section
where it’s essentially like an online
exhibition of looking at the artists
work and all one has to do is go through
10 to 15 key works to understand what an
artist life and work is about a style
and technique section to understand how
this artist is different and what makes
her work or his work so unique here’s a
look at the style into innovation that
William not men used we’re looking at a
glass plate negative that’s something
that is featured as part of the style
and technique section the significance
and critical issues of the artist simply
answering the question why does this
person matter why is this person
important to our cultural landscape as I
mentioned every book is available
simultaneously in French and this is
something that is also so critical when
looking at art in the 21st century
because Canadian art what has often
tended to happen is that there have been
very important artists in Quebec but the
translation of books about those artists
hasn’t happened to English so they
remained important artists in Quebec but
not in the rest of Canada every book has
the sources in resources section so one
is able to do further study and most
importantly and this has been a really
key innovation of the art Canada
Institute is that every book has a
section called
where to see which then links the reader
from the book to an institution and so
what the art Canada in
stitute is doing is we are actually
becoming a directory of where to see
Canadian art where to find Canadian art
around the world finally a key thing
that we do is we promote our authors
which traditionally actually it’s bit
academics and museum professionals have
not become rock stars so to speaks in
terms of the knowledge about their work
but this is bringing those individuals
into the 21st century into the
accelerated world of Museum and art
technology I wanted to show you another
book this is our Emily Carr book just so
you see how our format is similar from
book to book which is something that our
readers find very satisfying we have had
tremendous praise for our work the
director of the the National Gallery of
Canada said that the art Canada
Institute was the best news in Canadian
art in a long time that The Globe and
Mail had said we are breathing digital
life into Canadian art history MacLean
said that the contour content is
redefining the conversation about
Canadian art for 21st century audience
so we’re very very proud about where we
are going I want to conclude by going
back to where I started by saying
explaining to you that art really is a
fundamental human right and it is
something that should be accessible to
all but here is a quite amazing
statistic only 5% of public museum
collections is actually on view and on
display so if you go to the Art Gallery
of Ontario what you’re seeing is only 5%
most museum collections are actually
underneath the museum in vaults like
this one that this is a picture of a
museum vault and so where is the art
Canada Institute going where are we
moving in our direction we’re still in
nascent organization we’re moving away
from this model a model of put stuff out
there in a bricks and mortar institution
and people will come and we’re moving to
something like this building a huge
database of all of the works in Canadian
art
Canadian art history so that everybody
will be able to have access to the
conversation about Canadian art so
everybody feels comfortable with it and
so ultimately we all participate in what
is a fundamental human right thank you
[Applause]
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