Contact 1980/81
An installation of photographs in the St. Patrick subway station.
Itinerary: Art Gallery of Northumberland, Coburg: 28 Nov 1983 - 8 Jan 1984 The Station Gallery, Whitby: 3 March - 25 March 1984 Belleville Public Library and Art Gallery: 5 July - 30 July 1984 Temiskaming Art Gallery 13 Aug - 3 Sept 1984
Gordon Conn (ca.1888-1977) was an art collector and supporter of visual art in Toronto. He studied to be a musician and worked as a painter in his youth. Although he did not pursue a career as an artist, he maintained connections with many artists. He was a friend of the painter Kenneth Forbes (1892-1980) who painted Conn’s portrait in 1935. Together with Forbes, Gordon Conn founded the Ontario Institute of Painters devoted to the display of painting based on what Forbes called “traditional” art values. Conn turned over his studio in Wychwood Park in Toronto—The Little Gallery—to a series of one-man shows of its members. Near the end of his life, he donated paintings by artists represented in this collection to public art galleries in Ontario.
Originator: Extension. Curator: Michael Parke-Taylor. Exhibition originally held at the Art Gallery of Ontario in the Trier Gallery April 2-June 19, 1988. Subsequently expanded and exhibited at the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, Guelph, Ont. from Nov. 3-Dec. 2, 1990 and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Jan. 24-March 1, 1992.
Curated by Christina Ritchie, Contemporary Curatorial, & Donald Rance, Research Library
Originator: Extension.