Archives: Publications

Published on the occasion of the exhibition The Clichettes: Lips, Wigs, and Politics held at the McMaster Museum of Art (M(M)A) in Hamilton, Ontario in 2024. With essays by Ivana Dizdar, Marni Jackson, John Greyson, Alexandra Schwartz, Mark Kingwell, rl Goldberg, Lillian Allen, and Wanda Nanibush.

Bridging theatre, lip-sync, dance, drag, costume, and comedy, the Canadian artist trio The Clichettes (Louise Garfield, Janice Hladki, and Johanna Householder) developed a groundbreaking practice at the crossroads of performance art and feminist satire. In hundreds of performances and four full-length plays between 1978 and 1993, the artists adopted dozens of personas–from love- sick girl to metalhead to femme fatale–as they scrutinized the tropes of femininity and masculinity. Their sources and reference points included Greek mythology, art history, B movies, science fiction, 1960s fashion, Motown, and hard rock. Their characters were just as eclectic: Medusa, a quail hunter, a beanbag chair, a turtle, Fidel Castro. Unequivocally experimental, playful, and humorous, The Clichettes’ work was–above all–political, exposing the structures that define power under patriarchy. Published on occasion of the group’s first retrospective, this fully-illustrated catalogue presents The Clichettes’ many dynamic collaborations with artists, writers, designers, and directors and celebrates their radical vision for a better world.

This publication is available for purchase in person at McMaster Museum of Art. It is also available to purchase in person and online at the McMaster Campus Store.

ISBN: 9781926632247

Barbara Astman, Carl Beam, Meryl McMaster, Sorel Cohen, Joseph Beuys, Bidemi Oloyede, Christina Leslie, Jeff Thomas, Micah Lexier, László Moholy-Nagy

This exhibition brings together artworks drawn from the M(M)A permanent collection that present diverse ways of exploring self-imaging and subjectivity through different types of photo-based media. Expanding the genres of portraiture and self-portraiture, selected works reveal how the camera and its reproducible technologies are used to explore changes in bodily perception and identity in art and mass culture across time. The pursuit of traditional likeness is reconsidered through conceptual and formal experiments, raising questions about how we perceive and represent ourselves and others.

Purchase this publication via McMaster University’s Campus Store.

Ancient Greek and Roman coinage represents the intersection of politics, economics, and art; no other medium in the ancient world more closely reflects the decisions of administrations, the expectations of civic bodies, and detailed craftspersonship. Coins are among the most ubiquitous artifacts from Classical antiquity and despite their small size, are among the most instructive for dating, discerning portraiture, and reconstructing political control.

The Bruce Brace Coin Collection of the McMaster Museum of Art tells the marvelous story of coinage around the world from antiquity to the present day. The Greek and Roman collection includes examples that mark critical moments and important developments in ancient coinage, from its origins in Western Asia in the seventh century BCE to the Greek Peninsula and Aegean Islands to Sicily and Italy. This catalogue is intended to share the narrative of ancient coinage and to facilitate the study of ancient coins among students and enthusiasts alike.

Purchase this publication via McMaster University’s Campus Store.

This catalogue documents a multi-year art-science project called Immune Nations, produced on the occasion of its exhibition at the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Initiated in 2014 and co-led by Steven Hoffman (York University), Sean Caulfield (University of Alberta), and Natalie Loveless (University of Alberta), Immune Nations brought together scientists, policy experts, academic scholars, and artists to work on an interdisciplinary and collaborative research-creation project tackling complex issues related to the use and distribution of vaccines in the world today. The project launched at the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art’s Galeri KiT (2017), moved to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) headquarters building in Geneva, Switzerland (2017), and concluded at the McMaster Museum of Art at McMaster University (2021).

Purchase this publication via McMaster University’s Campus Store.

Documenting a 2019 exhibition at McMaster Museum of Art which sparked a visual dialogue between 19th century ledger drawings by Northern Plains warrior-artists and the lithographic prints of 20th century American artists Leonard Baskin and Fritz Scholder. Includes scholarly essays by some of the most prominent Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices within the fields of Indigenous art history and art criticism today:

• Janet C. Berlo, Professor of Art/Art History and Visual Culture at University of Rochester;
• Paul Chaat Smith, Associate Curator at the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC;
• Gerald McMaster, curator, artist, author, and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair of Indigenous Visual Culture and Curatorial Practice, Ontario College of Art and Design University, Toronto, ON; and
• Jeffrey Thomas, independent photo-based artist and research and recipient of the 2019 Governor General Award for the Visual Arts.
• Rhéanne Chartrand, curator of Indigenous art, McMaster Museum of Art

McMaster Museum of Art
Supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art
Pages: 132. Colour illustrations: 109. BW illustrations: 14

Purchase this publication via McMaster University’s Campus Store.

5 essays by Mandy-Suzanne Wong

Animals Across Discipline, Time & Space brings together works by five North American artists who use animal imagery to critically and dramatically address how we animals interact with the world around us.

26-page publication, including 5 pages of full colour illustrations

Shining light on the Native Indian/Inuit Photographers’ Association, 1985-1992

In 1985, a group of Indigenous image-makers came together in Hamilton to form the Native Indian/Inuit Photographers’ Association (NIIPA) with the core objective to promote a positive, realistic and contemporary image of Indigenous peoples through the medium of photography. They felt that, for far too long, Indigenous peoples had been portrayed through someone else’s lens, and that it was time they took control of the image in order to contest and demystify stereotypical representations of Indigenous peoples. This publication accompanied the 2018/2019 touring exhibition #nofilterneeded featuring works by founding NIIPA members.

46 page publication with 19 b/w illustrations

Published to document two related exhibitions at McMaster Museum of Art, McMaster University, NDN Trojan Horse (NDN signifies Indian), relates the decades-long struggle by which Indigenous artists and curators transformed Canadian museums into places where Indigenous art is collected and studied, thereby addressing the systematic racism that resulted in the historical absence of Indigenous peoples in the nation’s cultural institutions. Through exhaustive research, a judicious selection of artists, and interviews with two trailblazing Indigenous curators, Chartrand provides much needed critical thinking on Indigenous/museum relations in Canada.

Unapologetic: Acts of Survivance (2017), features major works from the 1980s and acknowledges the critical role these artists played in paving the way for Indigenous artists and curators today. Through powerful and provocative works these artists replaced inaccurate and stereotypical images with assertions of Indigenous peoples’ rights to self-representation, self-determination and sovereignty. Coyote School (2017) features contemporary works by mid-career artists who acknowledge the influence of senior Indigenous artists on the development of their own artistic practice. Influence comes in many forms, through familial and kinship bonds, formal and informal mentorships, and artistic inspiration.

Purchase this publication via McMaster University’s Campus Store.

A Cultivating Journey examines the collection of significant European historical and modern art donated to the McMaster Museum of Art by Herman Levy in 1984, and includes works by Courbet, Derain, Monet, Pissarro and Van Gogh. Today the production of such a project raises the critical question: how does the museum collect in the twenty-first century? This would have been a much easier consideration when the Levy donation entered the museum’s collection. Up until that time, art history and the museum were Western inventions that served a particular period (circa 1860-1980) without contestation. The situation has since changed, forcing a reconsideration of the making, collecting, and presenting of art in a diverse, global, multi-centred world through a decidedly ideological institution.

In English and French
250 pp col. ill. 10.75 x 8 in softcover
9781926632186

Purchase this publication via McMaster University’s Campus Store.

Rebecca Belmore has created some of Canada’s most haunting artworks on the subject of colonial violence and its living legacy. This publication documents a powerful two-channel video installation that unfolds on parallel walls, with two hand-held cameras following the struggles of a man and woman being chased through a snowy forest. MARCH 5, 1819 features the frantic final moments before Demasduit, a young Beothuk woman (later renamed Mary March) is captured by colonists at Red Indian Lake in Newfoundland. Her husband Nonosabasut dies trying to save her. Belmore’s re-enactment of this historical moment in contemporary dress places the viewer into the middle of the event – as both witness and perpetrator – effectively bringing the historical struggle of Indigenous peoples in Canada viscerally into the present.

Co-published by Carleton University Art Gallery, The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, McMaster Museum of Art, 2018

Purchase this publication via McMaster University’s Campus Store.

This fully illustrated publication explores the development and trajectories of Expressionism in art from the early 19th century to present day. The term Expressionism is most often associated with art and social activism in Germany between 1905 and 1937. It encompasses visual art, literature, philosophy, theatre, film and photography, and architecture of that era. These original essays expand the view on the subject, showing how the impulses behind and results of Expressionism suggest that it remains relevant today. The relationship between artists and society, the visual expressions that circulate through shared hopes for social awareness and change across national borders, these all prompt artists to respond in the spirit of a moment and trigger impulses to express the human condition through art. Drawn from the extensive collection of the McMaster Museum of Art, the book features nearly 100 paintings, drawings, prints, books, camera work and video: from formative historical works of the 19th century by artists such as William Blake, Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch, Egon Schiele and Wassily Kandinsky, through German Expressionists by the likes of Otto Dix, Emil Nolde, Erich Heckel, Kathe Kollewitz, George Grosz and Max Beckmann to contemporary works by Canadian artists such as Gershon Iskowitz, Gary Pearson, and Natalka Husar that underscore Expressionism’s relevance in society today.

199 pp col. ill. 10.75 x 8 in softcover
9781926632162

Purchase this publication via McMaster University’s Campus Store.

This compendium of original essays features discoveries made by an international team of researchers – scholars of applied radiation sciences, anthropology, art history, biomedical engineering, as well as conservators, conservation scientists, forensic art historians, and curators – who examined several paintings from the museum’s collection, including works by Vincent Van Gogh, Alexander Rodchenko and Peter Paul Rubens’ workshop. The result is a multidisciplinary, collaborative study of paintings as complex physical objects whose component parts tell us a story about their history.

In English and in French
280 pp colour throughout softcover
9781926632124

Purchase this publication via McMaster University’s Campus Store.

Both an exhibition catalogue and a critical examination of how contemporary art practice aligns with the pursuit of the conceptual in art, this publication considers the work of two emerging artists within the context of work by German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986). The practices of Hyang Cho and Ken Nicol are characterized by notional and self-reflexive organizing and ordering systems that draw cues from the everyday, examining and selecting readymade elements, and raiding philosophy. Their work may be described as “obsessive” or, as conveyed in the subtitle, “predisposed to”. They share an idea with Beuys, to “function as carriers for complex ideas [as much] as their capacity to release a communicative impulse between artists and viewer.” The essay explores ideas of art outside of the pictorial, such as the history of and the current practice in. Hyang Cho was born in South Korea and is based in Guelph Ontario. Ken Nicol is based in Toronto.

78 pp 40 col. ill. 9 x 6.5 in softcover
9781926632179

Publication documenting a two-part exhibition focusing on a medical humanities perspective as the bridge between understanding resilience through treatment, care and social action. The first segment examines how visual literary skills are employed by health professionals in order to develop their observational and empathetic skills. The latter segment presents artworks that ponder issues related to trauma, the body, memory, medicine, health and the museum. With work by Michelle Bellemare, Rebecca Belmore, Catherine Heard, Nancy Kembry and Yvonne Singer.

52 pp 18 ill. (14 col). 10 x 7.5 in softcover
9781926632155

Patrick Mahon is noted for his print-based projects that engage with historical and contemporary aspects of printmaking and establish community-based art initiatives, including several regarding the environment. This publication features three major exhibitions held at various locations across the country. Together they provide an excellent overview of the artist’s practice. Original essays and an interview with the artist explore the many facets of a singular artistic career.

Published with The Robert Langen Art Gallery (Wilfrid Laurier University).
60 pp 40 col. ill 10.25 x 8 in softcover
9781926632117

(Out of stock)

The Levy Collection at the McMaster Museum of Art is composed of nearly 200 works of art by masters such as Monet, Van Gogh, and Durer. The Levy bequest has also enabled the Museum to acquire 350 additional works by modern and contemporary artists such as Alfedo Jarr, Joseph Beuys and Anish Kapoor. Four brief individual essays document specific aspects of the collection, namely Northern Art in the Age of Rubens and Rembrandt, The French School, artist Josef Herman, and a reflection on the role of university art museums.

(Out of stock)

Celebrating McMaster University’s 125th and the Museum’s 45th anniversaries in 2012, this exhibition tracks the history and landmark moments of both through art works from the collection. This is the fourth addition to the Levy Folio of exhibition-based essays presenting varied curatorial perspectives on the Herman H. Levy Collection and Levy Bequest Collection at the McMaster Museum of Art.

8 pp
ISBN 978-1-926632-06-3

iNifiNiTi was presented at Museum London, 24 September 2011—18 March 2012. The accompanying catalogue is a partnership between Museum London and the McMaster Museum of Art.

32 pp
ISBN 978-1-897215-36-4

The legacies of the 18th century—enlightenment, empiricism, revolution and innovation are explored through an exhibition including major works by both 18th century artists Houdon, Gainsborough, Romney, Verelst and Taillasson; and senior contemporary Canadian artists Rebecca Belmore, Angela Grauerholz, Tony Scherman, John Massey, and Jiri Ladocha.

44 pp, colour images
ISBN 978-1-926632-05-6

The exhibition brings together several works by Greg Staats (Toronto-based, b. Ohsweken, Ontario) that reference language loss, acquisition and resurgence through photographic series, video works, and personal archival materials.

46 pp, ISBN: 978-0-929025-68-1

Catalogue for the exhibition, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED THOUGHTS ABOUT CITIES AND HISTORY, WAR AND PEACE, which focused on Higgins’ urban fiction; process printwork and his 2006-2009 Urban sculptures of utopias past and present.

ISBN 0920089712

(Out of stock)

Brochure for an exhibition guest curated by Dianne Bos, highlighting links between science and art in works from McMaster’s collection.

McMaster Museum of Art (05/2010) 16 pp, illustrated

(Out of stock)

Brochure for a collaborative installation by artist Dianne Bos and astronomer Doug Welch, intended to recreate a 17th century supernovae.

McMaster Museum of Art (05/2010), 12 pp

Published in conjunction with the Natalka Husar: Burden of Innocence exhibition Co-produced by the McMaster Museum of Art, Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, MacKenzie Art Gallery and Tom Thomson Art Gallery.

Macdonald Stewart Art Centre (2010)
82 pp, illustrated
ISBN: 978-0-920810-87-3

On-Line publication of a site-responsive installation at the Museum by S,o Paulo-based artist/theoretical architect Alexander Pilis. The exhibition presented Pilis,s 2004 video-work with works from the Museum’s European historical, modern, and contemporary collection.

McMaster Museum of Art (2010)
50 pp, illustrated

Shelagh Keeley came to prominence in the 1980s and has a significant early body of work that is housed in numerous Canadian institutions and, given Keeley’s 22-year residence in New York City, in most major American institutions. From very early on Keeley’s drawings challenged the established art world with investigations into Africa, AIDS, health and the body. More recent work includes bookworks that serve as an archive of the artist’s visual vocabulary during nearly three decades of practice. They record themes that have pervaded her practice: diversity, history, representation and that which is political and social. This monograph is the first critical assessment of Keeley’s thirty-year career.

Robert McLaughlin Gallery / McMaster Museum of Art (01/2010)
92 pp 28 col. ill. 10 x 7.5 softcover
978-1-926589-03-9

Publication of a group exhibition addressing how Canadian-based women artists contribute to contemporary moving image culture, particularly in terms of producing the thinking image. Essays by leading artists and critics provide a rich account of video art and experimental film in the Canadian context and the impact of Canadian-based work within transnational spheres. Participating artists: Maureen Bradley, Dana Claxton, Allyson Mitchell and b. h. Yael.

McMaster Museum of Art (01/2010)
56 pp 32 col. ill. 10 x 8 in softcover
978-1-926632-04-9

This presentation of lithographs and etchings highlights the visionary career of the American artist (1922-2000). A sculptor, printmaker, draughtsman and book designer, Baskin founded The Gehenna Press for which many of these prints were produced. This publication honours the Press by duplicating its characteristic saddle-stiched binding. The works of Leonard Baskin are found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, The National Gallery, the Vatican Museum and the British Museum.

McMaster Museum of Art (06/2009)
56 pp 18 col. ill. 11.5 x 8.5 softcover
978-1-926632-03-2

Allyson Mitchell creates installations that are epic figures, each one a monumental symbol of female brains, brawn and sexuality. Standing upright at over 10 feet tall, the sculptural works embody feminist theory and are painstakingly crafted creations of fun fur, taxidermy glass eyes and various fake bear parts. Since 1997, the Toronto-based artist has been melding feminism and pop culture to play with ideas about autobiography and the body, largely through the use of reclaimed textile and abandoned craft. Also an active curator, Mitchell is responsible for the exhibition When Women Rule the World: Judy Chicago in Thread.

McMaster Museum of Art (03/2009)
56 pp col. ill. 10 x 8 in softcover
978-1-926632-01-8

A review of Abrams’ film inspired paintings with short essays by acclaimed Canadian filmmakers Sky Gilbert, John Greyson, Jeremy Podeswa and Christina Zeidler. Abrams takes Beineix’s Betty Blue, Goddard’s Breathless and Wertmuller’s Swept Away, from the language of film to the language of painting.

48 pp col. ill. 8 x 8.5 in softcover
978-0-9783585-4-9

Varey’s pre-apocalyptic paintings of dark, hermetic towers against a meteor-streaked sky are discussed by one of the country’s most eminent art critics.

20 pp col. ill. (two fold-outs)
10 x 7.5 in softcover
978-1-926632-02-5

Publication devoted to a new video installation by the Toronto-based video artist and cultural critic. In merging the etchings of J.M.W. Turner with video of Canadian landscape bearing the same geographical names as their British counterparts, Fung reveals the subtle ways in which land is culturally misappropriated. In her essay, Gagnon refers to the superimposition of contemporary moving images upon older fixed ones as temporal collages. As a Canadian of Chinese ancestry born in Trinidad, Fung conveys his understanding of the misrepresentation of place as conveyed by popular film and media.

McMaster Museum of Art (01/2009)
48 pp col. ill. 8 x 10.5 in softcover
978-0-9783585-9-4

Works by University faculty and alumni, all practicing artists, have been selected by a jury of Canadian artists who studied at the University. Presentations on participating artists are accompanied by a study of the jury process.

40 pp col. ill. 10 x 7.5 in softcover
978-0-9783585-7-0

Four essayists explore the impact of synesthesia, or the involuntary joining of the senses, on the work of artists who are, or who are suspected to have been, synesthestic. They include David Hockney, Joan Mitchell, Tom Thomson, and Vincent van Gogh. Carol Steen is a New York-based synesthestic artist. Greta Berman is professor of Art History at the The Juilliard School. Daphne Maurer is professor at the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behavior at McMaster University.)

62 pp 12 col. ill. 10,5 x 8.5 in softcover
978-0-9783585-8-7

Selections of Inuit art from McMaster’s Collection
Guest Curated by Nancy Campbell. September 6, 2007 – January 5, 2008.

ISBN 978097835832

Using media spectacle to comment on itself, Stephen Foster, a Haida Metis from British Columbia, and James Gillespie, of European descent and living in Toronto, each confronts how a dominant European culture has marginalized and silenced the “other”. Their provocative photo-media images prompt us to question our everyday responses to issues of race, region and class and help open up dialogue on post-colonial issues.

Published in collaboration with the Kelowna Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Sudbury.
40 pp col. ill. 10 x 8 in softcover
978-1-894088-76-3

Catalogue of a group exhibition of sound artists from around the world: Kimsooja (New York City), Christian Marclay (New York City), Santiago Sierra (Mexico) and Su-Mei Tse (Luxembourg). 30 pp col. ill. 978-9783585-0-1 Sharon Switzer: Falling from Grace (2007) Carla Garnet et al Switzer’s work in digital video stems from years of working in new media and her familiarity with her medium allows for a fluidity of practice that has been likened to that of a painter. In these new works, text, animation and video footage are combined to create short looping sequences which relate moments in time characterized by both the artist’s dry humour and a sense of pathos.

36 pp col. ill. 7 x 9.5 in
978-1-894088-72-5

Robert Houle has been a visionary artist since the beginning of his career. “Native artists,” he wrote in 1982, “are committed to involvement in the polemics of modern art. Meaning derives from living in the twentieth century, where painting ranges from realism to abstraction and sculpture varies from shamanism to assemblage.” Employing the traditions of modernist painting, particularly as practiced by Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman, Houle has tenaciously insisted on reciprocity among the aesthetic and cultural specificities with which he engages. After years of breathtaking solo exhibitions, he returns here to his first stylistic impulse: abstraction and the parfleche figure. This important publication, with three essays and an artist’s statement, documents a unique and vital side to Houle’s innovative artistic practice. Mark A. Cheetham is Chair of the Department of Art at the University of Toronto.

McMaster Museum of Art in association with The Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa and Gallery One One One in Winnipeg.
105 pp 36 ill. (24 col.) 7 x 5 in softcover
978-0-9783585-2-5

In association with The Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa and Gallery One One One in Winnipeg.

Arnaud Maggs has a 40 year photographic career marked by an interest in systems. This publication highlights his photographs of two seminal studies on color published in the 19th century. ‘Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours’ and ‘Cercles chromatiques de M. E. Chevreul’ had a profound impact on naturalists, scientists and artists. Langford outlines their history and the extent to which they influenced society; even Darwin carried a copy of Werner’s on the Beagle. Maggs gives us magnificent photographs of rare copies of both books. Concurrent with the publication of this catalogue, Arnaud Maggs is a recipient of the Governor General’s Award.

86 pages, illustrated

31 pages, illustrated

Curated by Dr. Howard Jones
40 pages, illustrated

32 pages, illustrated

Yechel Gagnon exhibition catalogue
64 pages, illustrated

Erika James exhibition brochure
4 pages, illustrated

Site-responsive installations on McMaster University campus by Adrian Blackwell, James Carl, Bryce Kanbara, Germaine Koh, PED.
16 pages, illustrated

Germaine Koh exhibition catalogue

In addition to Koh’s brief descriptions, Reinke takes on each of the works, addressing their problematic existence as artworks, impossibly read otherwise. Heather describes Koh’s work as a re-imagination of the still life, whose material ordinariness demotes the primacy of the visual to facilitate democratic participation: form merely connects viewer and artist in a context that vanquishes everyday habits and perceptions.

32 pages, illustrated

An exhibition of the art of Faculty from the School of the Arts, McMaster University.

Brochure

35 pages, illustrated

24 pages, illustrated

(out of stock)
Douglas Clark exhibition catalogue
26 pages, illustrated