Ian M. Thom | |
---|---|
Born | Ian MacEwan Thom 1952 Vancouver, BC |
Known for | curator, author, art historian |
Partner | Darrin Martens |
Ian M. Thom (born 1952) is a Canadian curator, author, and art historian, well known for his exhibitions and major catalogues and books on Canadian Art and international art. In his 30-year duration (broken twice by appointments elsewhere) at the Vancouver Art Gallery (he retired in 2018), his unceasing dedication to Canadian art and the Vancouver Art Gallery collection, has contributed to better understanding the achievements of Canadian and world art.
Thom was born in Vancouver and received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of British Columbia in the late 1960s-early 1970s. Interested in art, he volunteered at the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) when Doris Shadbolt was the chief curator. [1] She became his role model.
Thom's first job for the VAG was as cataloguer (1976-1977). He then became registrar (1977-1978), then left for the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria job of registrar (1978-1979), then curator (1979-1980), acting director (1980), and chief curator (1980-1982). From there, he became curator of collections at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection (1982-1988), where among other projects, he published Murals from a Great Canadian Train (1986), organized a show and book of Maria Chapdelaine: Illustrations by Clarence Gagnon, and initiated a David Milne exhibition (completed at the VAG in 1991 along with his book David Milne (Douglas & Mcintyre Ltd and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection). He returned to the VAG in 1988 as Senior Curator. [2] He retired from the VAG in 2018 and since then, has worked as an independent curator and consultant. In 2020, he was granted Emeritus status by the VAG.
Thom's highlights among his 100 exhibitions and catalogues and books while at the VAG include, among many others, the VAG's 1993 Tom Thomson ; 1995 Andy Warhol: Images; 2000 Art BC: Masterworks from British Columbia (an independent publication done while at the VAG); its 2002 retrospective of E. J. Hughes; a 2005 retrospective of Takao Tanabe, a collaboration between the VAG and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria that later toured the country, a 2009 Challenging Traditions, Contemporary First Nations Art of the Northwest Coast, organized for the McMichael Canadian Art Collection which toured the country; the 2010 Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of Man, organized for the VAG in conjunction with The Royal Collection; [2] and Gordon Smith: Don't Look Back (2014) (an independent book). In 2018, he curated a last show at the VAG, A Curator`s View. [3] He also was the co-author of catalogues and shows on Gathie Falk (2000), Emily Carr (among them Emily Carr: New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon (2006)), presented by the National Gallery of Canada and the VAG); and B.C. Binning (2006). [2] His catalogues and books have been praised as using language to describe the works that is free of art speak. [4]
In his time as senior curator, the collection doubled in size, from 6,000 to 12,000 works, many by the Group of Seven and Emily Carr (he was responsible for acquiring 165 of her works). [5] He brought into the collection or increasing the representation of such artists as John Vanderpant, Beatrice Lennie, Jock Macdonald and Lilias Farley, [6] as well as First Nations art, both historical and contemporary. [7]
He worked closely with Ron Longstaffe, who donated close to 800 works to the gallery before his death in 2003. Thom was directly responsible for arranging the entry of 195 works from the collection Longstaffe gave to the gallery, including work by Betty Goodwin and B.C. Binning. [7] Since he retired, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Group of Seven, he curated Northern Pine: Watercolours and Drawings by the Group of Seven from the McMichael Canadian Art Collection organized by the Kelowna Art Gallery in 2020 with a publication of the same name. [8] He also published Clarence Gagnon: The Maria Chapdelaine Illustrations (Pomegranate & McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 2020). Besides that, he wrote Takao Tanabe: A Modern Landscape, in Takao Tanabe: A Modern Landscape, for the West Vancouver Art Museum, in 2021 and Bess Harris, in Sarah Milroy's catalogue Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment, at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 2021.
While on salary, Thom appraised ten fake sketches, allegedly by J. E. H. Macdonald, as authentic in 2014. [9] [10]
The Group of Seven, once known as the Algonquin School, was a group of Canadian landscape painters from 1920 to 1933, with "a like vision". It originally consisted of Franklin Carmichael (1890–1945), Lawren Harris (1885–1970), A. Y. Jackson (1882–1974), Frank Johnston (1888–1949), Arthur Lismer (1885–1969), J. E. H. MacDonald (1873–1932), and Frederick Varley (1881–1969). A. J. Casson (1898–1992) was invited to join in 1926, Edwin Holgate (1892–1977) became a member in 1930, and Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald (1890–1956) joined in 1932.
The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) is an art museum in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The museum occupies a 15,300-square-metre-building (165,000 sq ft) adjacent to Robson Square in downtown Vancouver, making it the largest art museum in Western Canada by building size. Designed by Francis Rattenbury, the building the museum occupies was originally opened as a provincial courthouse, before it was re-purposed for museum use in the early 1980s. The building was designated the Former Vancouver Law Courts National Historic Site of Canada in 1980.
Garry Neill Kennedy, was a Canadian conceptual artist and educator from Halifax, Nova Scotia. In the mid-1970s, he created works that investigated the processes and materials of painting. In the first decade of the 2000s, he expanded his work to investigate art and its social, institutional, and political framework.
Takao Tanabe, is a Canadian artist who painted abstractly for decades, but over time, his paintings became nature-based.
Dempsey Bob, is a Northwest Coast woodcarver and sculptor from British Columbia, Canada, who is of Tahltan and Tlingit First Nations descent. He was born in the Tahltan village of Telegraph Creek on the Stikine River in northwestern B.C., and is of the Wolf clan.
Edward John Hughes was a Canadian painter, known for his images of the land and sea in British Columbia.
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Ingo D. W. Hessel is a Canadian art historian and curator specializing in Inuit Art. The author of Inuit Art: An Introduction, Hessel has curated exhibitions for the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, the Museum of Inuit Art in Toronto, and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.
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Doris Shadbolt, née Meisel LL. D. D.F.A. was an art historian, author, curator, cultural bureaucrat, educator and philanthropist who had an important impact on the development of Canadian art and culture.
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