Canada has no national portrait gallery. A program rather than a building, an idea rather than a landmark, the Library and Archives Canada Portrait Portal brings together works amassed since the 1880s. Graduate students of Art History, the curators of this website have worked under the guidance of professor Loren Lerner of Concordia University to produce virtual exhibitions of these Canadian portraits. Intersecting social history, artistic practices, cultural aspects of representation, the resulting selections interrogate the role of portraiture, a concrete representation, for the nation, an especially abstract entity.
In addition to producing two distinct virtual exhibitions, each curator wrote in turn an extended essay on a single picture presenting a particular curatorial, historical or theoretical problem, informed by major thinkers within and outside the field of Art History. Finally, collaboration with the students of Concordia Studio Arts professor Marisa Portolese led to the production of short, pointed curatorial texts on photographic portraits by the students, exploring the portrait archive of the times to come.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art and the Department of Art History, Concordia University, for this website.
We thank the following people who contributed to this class project and helped to create the website.
The Art History students from the graduate seminar, Aspects of Curatorial Practice, taught by Loren Lerner, professor, Art History, Concordia University: Myriam Asselin, Amanda Burstein, Damien Fortin, Michel Hardy-Vallée, Jason Klimock, Zofia Krivdova, Patrick Leonard, Vana Nazarian, Julian Peters, Mikhel Proulx and Eliana Stractica-Mihail.
The artists from the Boy/Girl Culture Studio Arts course taught by Marisa Portolese, professor, Photography, Concordia University: Catherine Asselin-Boulanger, Peter Bleumortier, Myriam Bourgeois, Camila Escobar, Myriam Gaumond, Maik Graef, Giovanni Lanni, Annie France Leclerc, Hollis McGowan, Rachel Tetrault and Rachel Woroner.
Madeleine Trudeau, Curator, Library and Archives Canada, Portrait Program, generously contributed to the project, defining the exhibition topics, selecting the individual works to be analysed, and assisting in the review of the texts.
Dr. Martha Langford, professor, and Research Chair and Director, Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, for her critical insights on Canadian photographic portraits, and invaluable assistance with the student projects.
Michel Hardy-Vallée, Ph.D. student in Art History at Concordia University edited the content for this website, in consultation with the students, and formatted the texts and images.
Dina Vescio, a graduate of Concordia's MA in Art History program and project coordinator for the CHIN website, Canada's Got Treasures, a joint-venture with Concordia Art History, edited the citations.
Pata Macedo, a designer and educator who has collaborated with Loren Lerner in various types of graphic design projects over the past ten years was the designer of the website.