Sandra Paikowsky (born December 29, 1945) is a Canadian art historian, academic, curator, and writer with a career spanning five decades. In 2015, she received the

Order of Canada The Order of Canada () is a Canadian state order, national order and the second-highest Award, honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with the Canadian Centennial, ce ...

for her contributions to the development of Canadian art history as a discipline.

Early years

Paikowsky was born in

Saint John, New Brunswick Saint John () is a port#seaport, seaport city located on the Bay of Fundy in the province of New Brunswick, Canada. It is Canada's oldest Municipal corporation, incorporated city, established by royal charter on May 18, 1785, during the reign ...

. She received her B.A. from Sir George Williams University (now

Concordia University Concordia University () is a Public university, public English-language research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1974 following the merger of Loyola College (Montreal), Loyola College and Sir George Williams Universit ...

), Montreal (1967), and her M.A. from

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

(1969). She lives in Montreal.

Career

Paikowsky began her career in 1969 teaching art history at

in Montreal. As professor teaching art history there for over 40 years, she helped found the country's first Canadian art history program. In 1981, she also became the Director/Curator at the Concordia Art Gallery (now the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery), responsible for organizing many exhibitions in a broad range of Canadian art, encompassing modern or contemporary artists, often in mid-career or featuring their Montreal years, and societies and critics in Montreal. She was the co-founder and then the Editor and Publisher of the only peer review devoted to the history and theory of the visual arts in Canada - the "Journal of Canadian Art History"/Annales d’histoire de l'art canadien - for over 35 years (1974 on) with scholarly and informative articles about Canadian art, architecture and the decorative arts. She also was co-editor of the McGill-Queen's University Press/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History series.

bout Bout can mean: People *Viktor Bout, suspected arms dealer *Jan Everts Bout, early settler to New Netherland *Marcel Bout Musical instruments * The outward-facing round parts of the body shape of violins, guitars, and other stringed instrume ...

"Sandra Paikowsky", ''John Fox: Abstractions'', Oeno Gallery, Bloomfield, Ontatio, 2015. She taught undergraduate and graduate courses on different aspects of Canadian art. She retired in 2012 as professor emeritus. She has lectured widely on 20th century Canadian art, both nationally and internationally, and organized conferences on Canadian art, such as "Untold Histories", on art in the Maritime Provinces which was held at the

Art Gallery of Nova Scotia The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (AGNS) is a public provincial museums of Canada, provincial art museum based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The art museum's primary building complex is located in downtown Halifax and takes up ...

as well as creating the first history of the Maritime Art Association with a helpful website. In addition to teaching, she has supervised M.A. and Ph.D. theses in the area of Canadian art history.

Selected exhibitions

Paikowsky organized, co-organized, or contributed essays to exhibitions on the art of

Joyce Wieland Joyce Wieland (June 30, 1930 – June 27, 1998) was a groundbreaking artist and cultural activist who used diverse media to explore feminism and Canadian identity. Wieland found success as a Painting, painter when she began her career in Tor ...

(1985),

Betty Goodwin Betty Roodish Goodwin, (March 19, 1923 – December 1, 2008) was a multidisciplinary Canadian artist who expressed the complexity of human experience through her work. Early life Goodwin was born in Montreal, the only child of Romanian imm ...

(1986), Medrie MacPhee (1986),

Rita Letendre Rita Letendre, LL. D. (November 1, 1928 – November 20, 2021) was a Canadian painter, muralist, and printmaker associated with Les Automatistes and the Plasticiens. She was an Officer of the Order of Canada and a recipient of the Governor Gener ...

(1989), and

Irene Whittome Irene F. Whittome, is a multimedia artist. Life Whittome was born in Vancouver, British Columbia on March 4, 1942. She attended the Vancouver School of Art, and then spent five years studying printmaking at Stanley William Hayter's ''Atelier ...

(1990), and many others as well as on subjects such Quebec abstract painting in such catalogues as ''Achieving the modern: Canadian abstract painting and design in the 1950s'' for the

Winnipeg Art Gallery The Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) is an art museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Its permanent collection includes over 24,000 works from Canadian, Indigenous Canadian, and international artists. The museum also holds the world's largest collect ...

in 1993. In 1994, she curated and wrote the catalogue for ''Nova Scotian Pictures: Painting in Nova Scotia 1940-1966'' at the

Dalhousie Art Gallery The Dalhousie Arts Centre, at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, contains a number of theatres (including an outdoor rooftop theatre), Dalhousie Art Gallery, classrooms, and a sculpture garden. It remains the premier performing arts v ...

, Halifax. She has curated exhibitions on a broad range of subjects from the ''L'Association des artistes non figuratifs de Montréal = The Non-Figurative Artists' Association of Montréal'' (1983) to an exhibition on ''

Robert Ayre Robert Hugh Ayre LL. D. (April 3, 1900 December 24, 1980) was a pioneering art critic for the Montreal Star who wrote about Canadian art for 20 years (1950-1970) and an author of juvenile fiction inspired by legends of the First Nations. Caree ...

: Le critique face à la collection = Robert Ayre: The Critic and the Collection'' (1992). In 2010 she curated the exhibition ''John Fox: Refiguration in Montreal'' at the McClure Gallery, Visual Arts Centre, Montreal and in 2011 ''John Fox: Opera su carta'' in Venice, Italy.

Writing

She has had a long involvement with the "Journal of Canadian Art History". She was its co-founder and then the Editor and Publisher for over 35 years (1974 on). She was the co-editor of the survey book ''The Visual Arts in Canada: The Twentieth Century'' (Oxford University Press, 2010), said to succeed as a "useful historiographic case study" and wrote a chapter on modernist representational painting. She is the author of several books on Canadian art and praised for her writing such as the book/catalogue ''

Goodridge Roberts William Goodridge Roberts (1904–1974) was a Canadian painter known for his landscape paintings, still lifes, figure paintings and interiors. He was also a teacher. Career Goodridge Roberts was the son of poet and novelist Theodore Goodridge ...

: 1904-1974'' (

McMichael Canadian Art Collection The McMichael Canadian Art Collection (MCAC) is an art museum in Kleinburg, Ontario, Canada. The museum is located on a property in Kleinburg, an unincorporated village in Vaughan. The property includes the museum's main building, a sculpture gar ...

, 1998) which accompanied the travelling exhibition and ''James Wilson Morrice: Paintings and Drawings of Venice'' (2023), the first complete survey of the artist's images of Venice, Italy, which was given a rating of five stars out of five on Goodreads. She has written numerous articles on Canadian art for books and journals. Among them are "Constructing an Identity. The 1952 XXVI Biennale di Venezia and The Projection of Canada Abroad", in The Journal of Canadian Art History/Annales d'histoire de l’art canadien, vol.20, 1999; "'From Away' The Carnegie Corporation,

Walter Abell Walter Halsey Abell (1897–1956) was an American Art teacher and theoretician. Early years Walter Halsey Abell was born in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York. The Barnes Foundation sponsored him to study in France. He became a teacher of art and an ...

and American Strategies for Art in the Maritimes from the 1920s to the 1940s", Journal of Canadian Art History/Annales d’histoire de l’art canadien, vol. 27, 2006; and "The Girls and the Grid: Montreal Women Abstract Painters in the 1950s and Early 60s" in ''Rethinking Professionalism, Women and Art in Canada 1850-1970'' (McGill-Queens University Press, 2012). Recent articles include a Foreword for an exhibition and catalogue of ''Peter Krausz: photographies = photographs: 1969-2015'' (2015). She has written often on James Wilson Morrice. In 2005 and 2012, she wrote lengthy articles on Morrice and Venice in the Journal of Canadian Art History/Annales d’histoire de l'art canadien, the first titled "James Wilson Morrice. The Campiello delle Ancore" (vol. 26), the second, "James Wilson Morrice at the Rialto Market, Venice" (vol. 33). In 2009, she wrote "James Wilson Morrice's Return from School: A Modernist Image of Quebec Children", in the book ''Depicting Canada’s Children'' (Sir Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2009). In 2017, she wrote the chapter on "James Wilson Morrice in Venice. Stones and Water" in ''

Morrice Morrice is a surname, predominantly of Scottish origin. Notable people with the name include: * Ian Morrice, Australian CEO * James Wilson Morrice (1865–1924), Canadian landscape painter * Jane Morrice (born 1954), Irish politician * Mike Morric ...

: the A.K. Prakash Collection in trust to the nation'' by Katerina Atanassova et al. These chapters were called "wonderfully readable essays" in Goodreads. In 2019, she wrote the chapter on "Canadian artists at the water's edge" in ''Canada and Impressionism: New Horizons, 1880-1930'', the catalogue/book edited by Rosemary Shipton for the

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's National museums of Canada, national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the List of large ...

exhibition. Her contribution was described as "superbly written".Buis, A. (2021). Review of Rosemary Shipton, ed., Canada and Impressionism: New Horizons, Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada; Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2019, ISBN 9783897905474]. RACAR : Revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review, 46(1), 107–109. https://doi.org/10.7202/1078071ar.

Awards and honours

* First Distinguished Fellow of the Gail and Stephen Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art at

, Montreal (1998); * Order of Canada (2015);

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Paikowsky, Sandra 1945 births Living people People from Saint John, New Brunswick Canadian art curators Canadian art historians 20th-century Canadian non-fiction writers 21st-century Canadian non-fiction writers Concordia University alumni Academic staff of Concordia University Art museum people Canadian art educators Canadian women art educators University of Toronto alumni Members of the Order of Canada