Talking to a Portrait: Tales of an Art Curator

Behind the scenes at the world's major art museums, the life of a curator can be thrilling, amusing, disappointing--but never boring.

In these fifteen essays we encounter artists falling in and out of love, family tragedies, the creation of the Stanley Cup, the secrets of Tiffany, Antiques Roadshow, a rootless baroness, the design craze for aluminum, small Japanese boxes called kogos, watercolour sketchbooks of the Canadian north, a beautiful prayer room in Montreal, gondolas flying through windows in Venice, and Moscovites who love Goldfinger.

Pepall's stories sparkle with clarity and leave one with a sense that art is an amazing, worthwhile, occasionally mysterious human activity.

Archival black and white photographs and colour plates--including Edwin Holgate's Ludivine, one of the most beloved and recognizable Canadian portraits ever painted--make this book a must-have for art lovers, students, academics, museum-goers and readers interested in the role art plays in the creation of our lives.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Vehicule Press
Published: 07/15/2020
ISBN: 9781550655414
Pages: 240
Weight: 0.79lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.40w x 0.70d