1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910791555103321

Autore

Horrall Andrew

Titolo

Bringing art to life [[electronic resource] ] : a biography of Alan Jarvis / / Andrew Horrall

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Montreal ; ; Ithaca, : McGill-Queen's University Press, c2009

ISBN

0-7735-8254-1

1-282-86630-3

9786612866302

0-7735-7583-9

Descrizione fisica

xiii, 457 p. : col. ill., ports

Collana

McGill-Queen's/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation studies in art history ; ; no. 2

Disciplina

708.11/384

Soggetti

Art museum directors - Canada

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

1. "A Walking Work of Art": Introduction -- 2. "A Curiously Mixed Background": Family and Childhood, 1915-1934 -- 3. "Douglas Duncan Invented Me": Undergraduate, 1934-1938 -- 4. "I May Come Home with an Accent - God Forbid": Europe, Oxford, and Darrington, 1938-1939 -- 5. "The Dead Days": Toronto and New York City, 1939-1941 -- 6. "Up to My Ears in the Business World": England, 1942-1945 -- 7. "To Build a New Kind of Society": The Council of Industrial Design, 1945-1947 -- 8. "A Break in a Million": Pilgrim Pictures, 1948-1950 -- 9. "I Certainly Hope 1950 Will Be Different": Oxford House, 1950-1955 -- 10. "A Museum without Walls": The National Gallery of Canada, 1955-1956 -- 11. "A Chamber of Horrors": The National Gallery of Canada, 1957-1959 -- 12. "Canada's Most Outspoken and Witty Man About the Arts": Toronto, 1960-1968 -- 13. "We Have Lost Our Sheep Dog": The Last Years, 1968-1972.

Sommario/riassunto

Only thirty-nine when he took over the National Gallery in 1955, Jarvis already had an extraordinary record of achievement and social mobility at home and in England: he had trained with Canada's greatest artists, won a Rhodes scholarship, lunched at the Algonquin Round Table in New York, managed an aircraft factory, written a bestseller, produced films, run a slum settlement, and moved in a London social circle that



included Noël Coward and Vivien Leigh. As head of the National Gallery, Jarvis was a provocative public educator, advocating his idea of "a museum without walls" in countless public appearances. Instrumental in bringing modern art to the National Gallery, he shook artists and the art-minded public out of a period of national complacency. This first detailed account of the controversy surrounding his time at the gallery provides an important context for the ongoing and contested role of publicly supported arts and art institutions in this country.