Stealing the Show: Seven Women Artists in Canadian Public Art

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, Japan Foundation Fellow 1991-92, and the author of
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Home and As Though Life Mattered:
Leo Kennedy’s Story.

Public art? The cryptic phrase refers to art commissioned for display in
public places. Gunda Lambton, a Quebec artist and writer, focuses on
seven prominent Canadian women artists who received most of the public
commissions awarded to women between 1958 and 1988. Traditionally, such
commissions have gone to men.

And why the focus on women’s art? Lambton quotes Lucy Lippard: such a
focus “raises consciousness, invites dialogue and transforms
culture.” In her introduction, the author notes that public art, in
communicating with a large audience, must penetrate a screen of
“habits of seeing.” Ideally, public works invite dialogue. They may
express “the spirit of the times” or communicate civic pride or
grief.

Lambton devotes one chapter each to Marcelle Ferron, Anne Kahane, Rita
Letendre, Gathie Falk, Joyce Wieland, Jerry Grey, and Colette Whiten.
Images are in black and white, save for seven color plates (one per
artist) at the start of the book. The individual profiles, which include
descriptions of some of the difficulties many women artists encounter,
are thorough and balanced.