From left: Frieda Miller, Leah Sherman, and Andrea Fairchild
After completing her graduate studies at New York University, Sherman was hired at Sir George Williams University, her alma mater, in 1960 as an assistant professor.
A year later, along with Alfred Pinsky and Stanley Horner, she founded the university’s Department of Fine Arts, which in 1976 became the Faculty of Fine Arts. She became a full-time faculty member in 1969.
In a video made on the occasion of her 80th birthday by colleague Paul Langdon, Sherman recalls sitting in then vice-principal and registrar Douglass B. Clarke’s office with Pinsky, talking over who should chair the Department of Fine Arts they’d just created.
“‘You’re both equally qualified but I think it should be Alfie because he’s a man,’” she recalls Clarke saying.
“I think he was right,” she continues. “Alfie was such a wonderful … I was going to say bullshitter! [But] I don’t think the men would have taken me that seriously, no matter how good I was.”
Nancy Marrelli, former director of the Concordia Archives, knew Sherman as a colleague. “She was a true-blue Sir George Williams stalwart," she says.
“SGW was much smaller than Concordia is now, so there was a certain sort of freewheeling spirit about the place, particularly in the 1960s,” Marrelli adds. “She was somebody who was very dedicated and she really cared about teaching."
Although Sherman was not department chair at the beginning, she did drive the fine arts curriculum. Over the course of the 1960s, she put into place the BFA, MA and PhD programs in Art Education.
“These programs have helped to establish the Faculty of Fine Arts as a highly regarded North American institution of higher learning in the arts,” reads a notice published by Concordia for her retirement in 1994.
Sherman was also there in 1979 when the Faculty of Fine Arts grew beyond the space afforded to it in the Hall Building leading to the renovation of the Visual Arts Building — once a garage and car dealership — into a home for the fine arts.
For her lifetime role as a defender and promoter of the arts inside and outside of the university, Sherman was made an honorary lifetime member of the Canadian Society for Education through Art.
One of her greatest passions was the preservation of the work of Montreal artist Anne Savage, first a teacher and then a colleague of Sherman’s.
Savage was known for her colourful landscapes of both urban life and the countryside. Born and raised in Montreal, Savage painted a bygone era of the city.
Sherman dedicated much of her life to preserving the work and memory of the Montreal artist — much of the archive fonds in Sherman’s name are related to her work on Savage.
Marrelli worked at the Concordia Archives when Sherman deposited her personal collection. “She was such a promoter of Anne Savage. She was somebody who affected her really dramatically,” she says.
“She couldn’t help seeing the beauty,” Sherman said of Savage in a biography of the artist. “She couldn’t help passing it on.”