Mary-Beth Laviolette, Altitude Publishing, 2005; 544 pages and CD-ROM
with 197 colour images, index, $39.95
(and below)
A History of Art in Alberta 1905 - 1970,
Nancy Townshend, Bayeux Arts,
Inc., 2005, 304 pages, 50 colour and 21 B&W images, index, $39.95;
www.bayeux.com
A History of Art in Alberta 1905 -
1970 and
An Alberta Art
Chronicle:
Adventures in Recent and Contemporary Art together span
Alberta’s
century — from its inception as a Canadian province through to its
present-day status as a centre of visual art production. Conceived as a
joint venture when art historians Mary-Beth Laviolette and Nancy
Townshend began their research 10 years ago, each book is incomplete
without the other. Similarities, however, are mainly focused on the
hundreds of artists whose career trajectories overlap from book to
book, and the assertions by both authors that Alberta art is regionally
unique, highly innovative, and regrettably undervalued in the national
context. Laviolette and Townshend share a commitment to chasing down
every last shred of material and oral evidence documenting Alberta’s
art and artists. Their extensively footnoted texts attest to the depth
and breadth of their primary research and provide a strong foundation
on which future scholarship can be constructed.
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