The institute generally publishes six books a year, commissioning leading curators and art historians to write about influential artists like Tom Thomson, Jean Paul Lemieux, Paul-Emile Borduas, Alex Colville and Michael Snow. Books are free and available in both English and French.

Angel says the institute, which also posts essays, videos and online exhibitions, gets about 350,000 visits each year. It receives no public funds, but Angel says she raises about $500,000 a year through private sources. “It’s a very tight operation,” she says.

The institute’s books are skewed toward Central Canada. Western artists include Emily Carr, William Kurelek, Lionel Lemoine Fitzgerald and Jock Macdonald. Books about Winnipeg's Bertram Brooker; Robert Houle, an artist from the Saulteaux First Nation in Manitoba; and Molly Lamb Bobak, who spent time on both coasts, were published this year.

James King, an English professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., wrote about Brooker, a pioneer of abstract art in Canada. Brooker spoke out against the Group of Seven’s artistic vision and stirred up controversy again in 1931 when he condemned conservative attitudes in his essay, Nudes and Prudes.

About a third of the institute’s books are about female artists, including Prudence Heward, a figurative painter in the Beaver Hall Group; Paraskeva Clark, a Russian-born painter who focused on social justice issues; and Joyce Wieland, an experimental mixed-media artist in Toronto.

Five are Indigenous, including Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau and two Inuit artists, Pitseolak Ashoona and Shuvinai Ashoona. A book about Cape Dorset artist Oviloo Tunnillie is slated for 2019. 

This year's releases included books about Paterson Ewen, known for expressive paintings on gouged plywood: Françoise Sullivan, a Montreal-born sculptor and painter; and Homer Watson, an Ontario landscape painter.

Forthcoming are books about Gershon Iskowitz, a Polish-born Holocaust survivor who made art in Toronto; Ozias Leduc, one of Quebec’s early painters; Edward Poitras, a Métis artist in Saskatchewan: Suzy Lake, a Toronto-based conceptual photographer and performance artist; and Saskatchewan-born Agnes Martin, who went on to fame in the United States.

Angel says the institute will be launching thematic books. The first, by art historian Laura Brandon, who worked for years at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, is about war art. Also in the works is a series that looks at how art history unfolded in different Canadian cities. And a project that gives schoolteachers the resources to teach topics like gender or the immigrant experience through the lens of art is moving forward. 

Read the article as originally published here.

Learn more about ACI's new art books releasing 2019 here.