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Detail, Spirit of Mining, Beatrice Lennie 1929
Collection of the B.C. Museum of Mining, Britannia, B.C.


ART & ARTISTS IN EXHIBITION VOL. ONE: VANCOUVER 1890 - 1950

ISBN 978-0-9732542-0-4 ( CD-ROM )

Release 1.25c issued October 1 2008
(first issued January 2004)

INTRODUCTION

ART & ARTISTS IN EXHIBITION: VANCOUVER 1890 - 1950 is a digital compilation of information about art, artists, and art exhibitions in early Vancouver, British Columbia. The information is written as linked Web pages, enabling easy and quick access to a huge collection of facts. The information is available only on CD-ROM at this time, since the hard copy prints out to more than 2,500 pages!

The CD-ROM is available for the price of $249.00 Canadian funds, including applicable taxes. This price includes delivery. A free upgrade is also included, since additional information is still being written into the project. There are currently 1,780 separate web pages on the CD-ROM, containing an index of 1,800 artists who exhibited in Vancouver between 1890 and 1950; 1,200 artist mini-biographies; a list of 330 art exhibitions with 100 exhibition catalogues completely transcribed detailing over 8,400 individual artworks; an index of 160 arts-related groups, with numerous articles on them; and also numerous reviews, artists' statements, letters, and other information. An extensive list of references is included, as well as a number of "occasional papers" on various art related matters.

All pages are "printer friendly", no plug-ins are required, no special software is necessary to view the pages. They can be viewed on any computer or Pocket PC that has a web browser installed. The files are compactly coded for fast access. The previous versions of the project were text only, but in Release 1.24 a selection of images was added to enhance the scope of presentation. 28 more images were added in Release 1.25. The images include photographs of sculptures around Vancouver by Charles Marega and Beatrice Lennie, as well as photographs of selected artworks by artists in the index.

The Google Desktop search engine is a free utility that can be used to search the entire contents of the project, further enhancing its usefulness.

The information is valuable to a wide range of people including students, teachers, researchers, historians, collectors, appraisers, auctioneers, gallery owners, and antiquarian dealers. It is by far the largest, most inclusive, and highly detailed compilation of information on this topic and time period in existence, and contains much rare and hard to find information. It is the result of ten years of continuing research and more than four years of writing and input.

The project has been surprisingly well-received by the arts community, garnering nominations to date for one international and two civic awards (Melva J. Dwyer Award, 2005; Vancouver Heritage Award, 2004; Vancouver Arts Award, 2005), and favorable reviews in ARTichoke magazine (2004) and the B.C. Historical Journal (2006).



SAMPLE BIOGRAPHICAL WEB PAGE

The following link takes you to a sample biographical web page, in this case for artist John Innes. The links otherwise embedded in that biography have been converted to lettering in bold, as those files are not posted on-line and would therefor result in an error message. All text in bold other than the main headers on the page would be links to files for other artist biographies, pages for artists' groups, transcribed articles and indices, and transcribed exhibition catalogues, in this case to thirteen more related files.

Each biographical page is divided into seven main sections:
     1. The artist's name in full, including optional spellings, single and married names.
     2. The artist's dates of birth and death, as known and if applicable.
     3. Groups and associations that the artist belonged to or exhibited with.
     4. A biographical summary of the artist, as known to the Editor.
     5. A summary of exhibitions, linked to transcribed exhibition catalogues (where done).
     6. A summary of reference material where the artist has illustrations or information published about them, as known to the Editor.
     7. A summary of published reviews that the artist received, linked to transcriptions (where done).

John Innes Biographical Page



REVIEWS

"It is truly impressive, intelligently and skillfully organized..."
Charles C. Hill, Curator of Canadian Art, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

"It is a most welcome addition to Canada's national research collection in the visual arts."
Jo Beglo, Bibliographer, National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives, Ottawa

"It is indeed a very helpful and impressive body of work."
Ian M. Thom, Senior Curator, Vancouver Art Gallery

"...an invaluable contribution to Canadian cultural research - and a boon to all art historians..."
Paula Gustafson, Editor, Artichoke magazine book review, Summer 2004 issue, Vancouver

"...the result is a document that is amazingly comprehensive and accurate."
Lynn Brockington, Librarian, Vancouver Art Gallery

"This tool is a rich storehouse of information about artists working in Vancouver."
Murray Waddington, Chief, Library & Archives, National Gallery of Canada

"It is a compact gem densely filled with valuable information."
Letia Richardson, Art Researcher and Writer, Vancouver

"It has been handy in more ways than you might imagine."
Cheryl Siegel, Librarian, Vancouver Art Gallery



To order, please refer to Contact page.



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