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Iain Baxter& is a Canadian conceptual artist with a wide-ranging career. He was born Iain Joseph Wilson Baxter in 1936 in Middlesbrough, England, and moved to Calgary, Alberta with his family one year later. While studying biology at the University of Idaho, Baxter met Elaine Hieber, whom he married in 1959. Following studies in the U.S. and Japan, the Baxters moved to Vancouver in 1964, when Iain accepted a teaching position at the University of British Columbia. In subsequent years, he also taught at Simon Fraser University and the Emily Carr College of Art. Early collaborative art ventures culminated in the development of the N.E. Thing Company in 1967. The company functioned as an “aesthetic umbrella,”
allowing Iain and his wife to work collaboratively and anonymously to produce a wide range of art forms and projects. The N.E. Thing Co. was formally incorporated in 1969, with Iain Baxter as President and Elaine as Vice President; the two later became co-presidents. Elaine Baxter adopted Ingrid as her preferred name in 1971. Among the company’s projects was the Eye Scream Restaurant, in operation from 1977 to 1978. Following the Baxters’ divorce, the company dissolved in 1978. Iain Baxter returned to Calgary in 1981, where he taught at the Alberta College of Art. For a brief period (1983-84), he was employed as Creative Consultant to the Labatt Brewing Company. Since 1988, Baxter has lived in
Windsor, Ontario, where he teaches at the University of Windsor. He married Louise Martin in 1984. In 2005, he legally changed his surname to Baxterand, commonly using the forms “Baxter&” or “BAXTER&”. Baxter&’s work is particularly informed by the ideas of Marshall McLuhan and communications theory. He also cites the art of Giorgio Morandi, Zen Buddhism, and his early studies in biology and ecology as conceptual influences. Baxter& has explored a broad range of media and genres, including vacuum-formed plastic, inflated vinyl, telex, polaroid prints, environmental art and multimedia installation. His work is included in the collections of numerous major Canadian and international galleries.

Charles Shaw Band (1885-1969) was a Toronto business executive, philanthropist and collector of Canadian art. He was born in Thorold, Ontario and educated at Upper Canada College in Toronto. In 1914 he married Helen Huntington Warren (whose mother Sarah Trumbull Van Lennep Warren was a founder of the Art Gallery of Toronto) with whom he began collecting artworks. During his career, he worked with many Canadian firms, including Canadian Surety, Goderich Elevator and Transit Co. Ltd., Manufacturers Life Insurance, Toronto General Trust, as well as Gutta Percha and Rubber Limited of Toronto.

In addition to his business interests, Band was affiliated with various community organisations including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, the John Howard Society, the Red Cross, the Art Gallery of Toronto, and the National Film Board.

Band was a friend of members of the Group of Seven, especially Lawren Harris and Fred Varley. He was President of the Art Gallery of Toronto 1945-1948 and again in 1964-1965. In 1948 he was made Officier d’Académie by the French government for his role in bringing an exhibition of French masters to Canada the previous year. The noted Collection of Mr and Mrs Charles S. Band was the subject of exhibitions in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, Los Angeles and other cities. C. S. Band died in Toronto in 1969, leaving the bulk of his collection to the Art Gallery of Ontario.

David Blackwood (1941-2022) was a Canadian artist known for his prints depicting Newfoundland life and culture. Born in Wesleyville, Newfoundland in 1941, Blackwood was exposed to subjects which influenced the themes represented in his art: fishermen and sealers and their families; relationships with the land; harsh landscapes; and the importance of tradition to communities on Canada’s east coast. Blackwood attended the Ontario College of Art from 1959-1963, where he studied printmaking. Subsequently, he was the first artist-in-residence at Erindale College at University of Toronto Mississauga, from 1969 to 1975. The Erindale College Art Gallery was renamed The Blackwood Gallery in 1992 in the artist’s honour. In 1976, Blackwood was the subject of a documentary produced by the National Film Board of Canada – titled Blackwood – which was nominated for an Academy Award. Blackwood was a member of the AGO Board of Trustees and the Inuit Art Foundation in Ottawa. He was also the recipient of numerous other awards and accolades, including honorary doctorates at the University of Calgary and Memorial University of Newfoundland (1992); a National Heritage Award (1993); the Order of Ontario (2002); and the Order of Canada (1993).

Blackwood exhibited nationally and internationally, with over 90 solo shows throughout the span of his career. In 1999 he donated 242 archival prints to the AGO, making the gallery an international research centre for the artist’s work. He was named an honorary chair of the AGO in 2003. The AGO presented a major retrospective of Blackwood’s work in 2011, titled Black Ice: David Blackwood Prints of Newfoundland. Blackwood’s works are also in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Winnipeg Art Gallery, National Gallery of Florence, and Uffizi Gallery in Florence, amongst others. Blackwood has resided in Port Hope, Ontario since the 1970s, where he was a teacher of drawing and painting at Trinity College School.

Helen Galloway McNicoll (1879-1915) was a Canadian impressionist painter.

Kathleen Margaret Graham (1913-2008), née Howitt, was a Canadian abstract painter whose work was predominantly inspired by landscape forms. Born in Hamilton, she spent most of her life in Toronto and summered in Algonquin Park. Graham earned her B.A. at Trinity College, University of Toronto. Her husband, Wallace Graham, was a prominent doctor and academic.

K.M. Graham took up painting full-time in 1962, following the sudden death of her husband. She attended night classes at Central Technical School in Toronto, but was essentially self-taught as a painter. She was for many years a volunteer at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and enjoyed the support of a close group of practicing artists. Her friend and mentor, Jack Bush, selected and hung her first exhibition “Homage to Emily Dickinson” at the Carmen Lamanna Gallery in 1967.

In 1971, Graham made her first of many trips to Cape Dorset, where she later became an artist in residence in 1976 and produced several series of lithographs in addition to her works on canvas. From the 1970s through to the 1990s, Graham travelled extensively to Newfoundland and Labrador, which became another major inspiration for her work.

Graham exhibited actively from the 1960s until the 2000s at influential galleries including Carmen Lamanna, The Pollock Gallery, David Mirvish and the Moore Gallery. Her work is found in numerous major public collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the British Museum. She became a member of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1973 and was made an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, University of Toronto in 1975.

Robert Nelson Markle (Hamilton, Ontario, 1936-Holstein, Ontario, 1990) was a Canadian artist, writer, educator and musician. He began his studies at the Ontario College of Art (OCA) in 1954, but was expelled before graduation. While at OCA, he met Marlene Shuster, a fellow student, whom he married in 1958. The focus of Markle’s work from his early days was the female nude, particularly burlesque dancers, and Marlene became his primary model and muse. In 1962 Markle had his first group exhibition at The Isaacs Gallery in Toronto, becoming one of the “Isaacs Group” of artists. In 1965, Markle paintings shown in the exhibition Eros ’65 at the Dorothy Cameron Gallery were seized on a charge of obscenity, drawing considerable media attention. In the mid-1960s Markle began to write for magazines such as the Toronto Telegram Showcase, Maclean’s, and Toronto Life, publishing widely on topics as diverse as striptease, hockey, childhood Christmases, and Gordon Lightfoot. Markle also worked extensively as an illustrator, contributing images to magazines and literary journals. His work as an educator included terms at The New School of Art (1966-1977) and Arts’ Sake (1977-1982) as well as OCA and the University of Guelph. From the early 1960s, Markle played tenor saxophone and piano in the Artists’ Jazz Band. In 1970 the Markles moved to a farmhouse outside of Holstein, Ontario, although Robert re-established a studio in Toronto from 1979 to 1982. In 1979, he won a commission to decorate a Toronto hamburger restaurant, which was named Markleangelo’s in his honour. His other large-scale commissions include wall-sculptures for the Ellen Fairclough Building in Hamilton, Ontario, and the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. He executed painted outdoor murals in Owen Sound and Mount Forest, Ontario. Markle was killed in a traffic accident in 1990. Of Mohawk ancestry, Markle used his mother’s spelling of his surname, although it was spelled “Maracle” on his birth certificate. Markle worked primarily in painting and ink drawing, and also explored photography, collage, printmaking, wooden sculpture and neon. He collected folk art, which inspired a number of whirligig works later in his career. His work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada.

Thomas Roche ("Tommy") Lee was an ephemera collector and amateur art historian who lived at least part of his life in Baie d'Urfé, Quebec. He was the author of Albert H. Robinson, the painter's painter (Montreal, Canada : T.R. Lee, 1956), and produced an edition of Daniel Fowler's autobiography. He also made studies of Quebec church architecture. Lee corresponded for many years with Sybille Pantazzi, Librarian of the Art Gallery of Ontario, with whom he exchanged rare Canadian exhibition catalogues, ephemera, and manuscript material. He died in Toronto in 1977.

Jules Frederic Wegman was a Swiss-born architect who practiced in Canada at the firm of Darling and Pearson from 1905 until his death in 1931. Born in Neuchatel, he immigrated to Chicago at the age of 10 with his architect father, who undertook his training. At one point he was sent to Jerusalem to measure the city and its buildings, and his drawings were used to reproduce the city at the Worlds’ Fair at St. Louis in 1904. He spent several years at the Chicago firm of D.H. Burnham before moving to Toronto to join Darling and Pearson, where he became a partner in 1924. He worked on the Sun Life Building in Montreal, the North Toronto Station at Yonge and Summerhill, and the 1925 expansion of the Art Gallery of Toronto. He spoke at least four languages fluently and traveled widely, collecting photographs and drawings of architectural details. In 1911 he joined the Arts and Letters Club and lunched there regularly. In 1912 he was Chairman of the Toronto Chapter of the Ontario Association of Architects and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada shortly before his death.

Johan Wilhelm (Billy) Klüver (1927-2004) was an electrical engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories who founded Experiments in Art and Technology.