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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.

Mary Augusta Stewart Houston Bagnani (1903–1996), known after marriage as Stewart Bagnani, was an administrator at the Art Gallery of Toronto (now the Art Gallery of Ontario) and a lecturer in fine art. Born in Toronto of a distinguished family, she was the daughter of Stewart Fielde Houston (1868–1910), manager of Massey Hall in Toronto and first editor of The Financial Post. Her mother was Augusta Louise Beverley (Robinson) Houston (1859–1935), daughter of Mary Jane (Hagerman) Robinson (1823–1892) and John Beverley Robinson (1821–1896), mayor of Toronto (1856), member of Parliament in Ottawa (1872–1880) and Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario (1880–1887). Augusta Robinson was one of five children: John Beverley, Napier, Christopher, Minnie Caroline (d. 1923; from 1881 Mrs William Forsyth Grant) and Augusta herself (from 1898, Mrs Stewart Fielde Houston). Stewart Bagnani’s great-grandfather was Sir John Beverley Robinson (1791–1863), Chief Justice of Canada West (now Ontario) from 1829 to 1862. (Mary Augusta) Stewart Houston attended school in England and in Toronto (Bishop Strachan School), and later studied art history in Rome, where she met Gilbert Bagnani. After her marriage to Dr Bagnani in Toronto in 1929, Stewart Bagnani worked beside her husband in the excavations at Tebtunis entrusted to the Royal Italian Archaeological Expedition in Egypt of which Dr Bagnani was director. On site, she drew and painted watercolours (now at Trent University) of early Coptic church frescoes, and recorded observations of excavation workers and of local customs to accompany Dr Bagnani’s photographs. When Gilbert and Stewart Bagnani moved to Canada in 1937, they worked at enlarging the farmhouse on their estate Vogrie to accommodate collections of books and works of art. In the 1950s, a mural was commissioned for a room in the house from Canadian artist William Ronald (1926–1998) of the Painters Eleven. In 1951, while her husband was teaching at the University of Toronto, Mrs Bagnani became head of Extension at the Art Gallery of Toronto, a position she held until 1963. When Dr Bagnani accepted a post at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont. in 1965, Mrs Bagnani gave lectures there on fine art, worked on promoting the Mackenzie Gallery at the university and volunteered at Kingston (Ont.) Penitentiary. A pamphlet and transcripts of two lectures by Stewart Bagnani are in the library collection of the AGO.
After her husband died in 1985, Stewart Bagnani lived in Toronto until her death in 1996 at the age of 93. She was buried with her husband Gilbert in Cobourg (Ont.).

Alfred Harold Howard (1854–1916) was a British Canadian graphic artist, calligrapher and decorative designer in Toronto in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Liverpool, England, he apprenticed as a lithographer with the Liverpool branch of the firm Maclure, Macdonald and Macgregor. In 1876 he immigrated to Canada and eventually opened an office of graphic design in the Temple Building in downtown Toronto. He received the Marquess of Lorne’s Medal for Design in 1881 and was made an academician of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1883.
Howard’s commercial design work took the form of illuminated addresses of welcome, certificates and diplomas and addresses of condolence. In 1891 he produced the City of Toronto address of condolence presented to Lady Macdonald on the death of the Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. Howard exhibited with the Ontario Society of Artists at their Applied Art Exhibition in 1900 and with the Canadian Society of Applied Art in 1905. He was a member of the Toronto Art Students’ League and the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto. When he died in Toronto in 1916 (26 February), the Art Museum of Toronto held a memorial exhibition of his work.
Howard’s artworks are in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the Toronto Reference Library, the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

Janice Duff is the grand-niece of George Agnew Reid.

A formal Design Unit was first established at the Gallery in 1974. Prior to this, design projects that provided visual identity for the Gallery and promoted exhibitions and events were completed without the assistance of a formal department, often with assistance from external contracts. The Design Unit was established shortly after Scott Thornley joined the institution as Head Designer, and was at first separate to the Publications Department that was established in 1972. In 1981, however, these two departments were amalgamated as Publications & Design, a division of the Public Affairs branch. This department was responsible for all print and graphic material produced by the Gallery, including catalogues, posters, brochures, postcards, banners, and signage.
The department went through a series of name changes in the 1980s, becoming “Promotion” in 1983, “Graphic Design & Production” in 1986, and “Publication & Design” in 1989. The heads of the department between 1981 and 1990 included Denise Bukowski, Normand Terry, and Alan Terakawa. The Publications and Design department became a part of the Exhibitions division in the early 1990s, where it remained until the early 2010s.
During this period (1990-2010), there were a number of additional Designer roles established in different divisions, separate to the Publications and Design department. This included a Designer in the Marketing division.
In approximately 2011, the Publications and Design department separated, with Publications becoming “Publishing” and moving to the Curatorial division. Publishing was later briefly moved to the Digital division while publications were increasingly being released digitally, but the department returned to Curatorial shortly thereafter. As of 2023, Publishing remains part of Curatorial and the Design Studio is part of the Brand and Business division.

Robert William Geary (fl. 1913-1933) lived in Niagara Falls, Ontario. According to a note in the inventory, in 1913 the Geary family lived at 33 Barker Street. Geary was the third president of the Lundy’s Lane Historical Society (1908 1932), and was the author of Historical sketches : a memorial of the hundredth anniversary of the War of 1812-14, 1912. He died in June, 1933.

Dr. Yehoshua (Shieky) Brownstone is a photographer in London, Ontario. He was formerly a Professor in the Biochemistry Department at the University of Western Ontario.