Betty Goodwin | Sources & Resources

By the 1970s, Goodwin’s work was attracting critical attention in the Montreal press. Her career profited from frequent reviews in newspapers and magazines as her reputation grew across the country and internationally through several solo exhibitions and noteworthy group exhibitions in Canada and abroad. Goodwin’s art was given feature articles in both art and popular press magazines. Comprehensive bibliographies exist in The Art of Betty Goodwin (Art Gallery of Ontario, 1998) and The Prints of Betty Goodwin (National Gallery of Canada, 2002). Goodwin’s notebooks and papers are found in the Edward P. Taylor Library and Archives, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

Betty Goodwin, Martin Goodwin (*left*), and Sam Tata (*right*) at the opening of Goodwin’s exhibition at Galerie 1640, Montreal, March 1970, photograph by Gabor Szilasi.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

1972

Betty Goodwin – Vest Prints, Galerie B, Montreal.

1974

Betty Goodwin – Tarpaulins and Other Pieces, Galerie Joliette, Quebec.

1976

Betty Goodwin, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.

1983

Betty Goodwin, Recent Drawings, 49th Parallel, Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, New York.

1987–88

Betty Goodwin: Works from 1971 to 1987, organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Travelled to the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. This exhibition was also seen in versions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, and at 49th Parallel, Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, New York, in 1988.

1989

Betty Goodwin, Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland.

Betty Goodwin: Steel Notes, 20^a Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil.

1990

Betty Goodwin, Edmonton Art Gallery.

1994

Betty Goodwin: Peintures, dessins, sculptures, scénographies, Centre d’art contemporain de la Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel, France.

1995–96

Betty Goodwin, Signs of Life – Signes de Vie, Art Gallery of Windsor and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

1995–97

Betty Goodwin: Icons, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

1998–99

The Art of Betty Goodwin, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

2002–3

The Prints of Betty Goodwin, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax; and McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton.

2009

Betty Goodwin, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.

2010

Betty Goodwin, From the Collection of Salah J. Bachir, Oakville Galleries.

Selected Group Exhibitions

1976

17 Canadian Artists: A Protean View, Vancouver Art Gallery.

1977

Montréal maintenant, London Regional Art Gallery, London, Ontario.

Betty Goodwin in Venice, 1995, photograph by Sheila Segal.

1980

Pluralities 1980 Pluralités, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

1982–83

O Kanada, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany.

1985

The Allegorical Image in Recent Canadian Painting, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston.

Aurora Borealis, Centre International d’art contemporain de Montréal.

1991

Un archipel de désirs : les artistes du Québec et la scène internationale, Musée du Quebec, Quebec City.

1995

Identity and Alterity: Figures of the Body 1895/1995, 46th Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy.

Diary of a Human Hand: Betty Goodwin, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Susan Rothenberg, Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts, Montreal.

Corpus, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon.

2000

Memoirs: Transcribing Loss, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.

2010

Visceral Bodies, Vancouver Art Gallery.

2021–22

“How long does it take for one voice to reach another?” Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Selected Publications

Balkind, Alvin. 17 Canadian Artists: A Protean View. Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1976. English exhibition catalogue.

Bélisle, Josée. Betty Goodwin. Montreal: Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 2009. English and French exhibition catalogue.

Bogardi, Georges. Betty Goodwin: Passages. Montreal: Concordia Art Gallery, Concordia University, 1986. English and French exhibition catalogue.

Cover of *The Art of Betty Goodwin*, edited by Jessica Bradley and Matthew Teitelbaum (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1998).

Bradley, Jessica. Betty Goodwin, Signs of Life – Signes de Vie. Windsor and Ottawa: Art Gallery of Windsor and National Gallery of Canada, 1995. English and French exhibition catalogue.

Bradley, Jessica, and Matthew Teitelbaum, eds., with texts by Anne Michaels, Anne-Marie Ninacs, and Robert Racine. The Art of Betty Goodwin. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1998. English exhibition catalogue.

Brusatin, Manilo, and Jean Clair. Identity and Alterity: Figures of the Body 1895/1995. Venice: La Biennale di Venezia / Marsilio, 1995. English exhibition catalogue.

Durand, Régis. Betty Goodwin, Collection de l’ange no. 4, Noisiel, France: La Ferme du Buisson, Centre d’art contemporain, Centre d’art et de la culture de Marne-la-Valée, 1994. French exhibition catalogue.

Fry, Philip, Willard Holmes, Jessica Bradley, Chantal Pontbriand, and Allan MacKay. Pluralities 1980 Pluralités. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1980. English and French exhibition catalogue.

Gosselin, Claude, René Blouin, and Normand Thériault. Aurora Borealis. Montreal: Centre international d’art contemporain de Montréal, 1985. English and French exhibition catalogue.

Kuthy, Sandor, and Pierre Théberge. Betty Goodwin. Bern: Kunstmuseum Bern, 1989. French and German exhibition catalogue.

Morin, France, and Sanford Kwinter. Betty Goodwin: Steel Notes. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1989. English, French, and Portuguese exhibition catalogue for Canada’s representation at the 20^a Bienal de São Paulo.

Cover of *Betty Goodwin: Steel Notes*, by the National Gallery of Canada, France Morin, and Sanford Kwinter (Ottawa: The Gallery, 1989).

Moser, Gabrielle. Betty Goodwin, From the Collection of Salah J. Bachir. Oakville: Oakville Galleries, 2010. Brochure.

Parent, Alain. Betty Goodwin. Montreal: Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 1976. French exhibition catalogue.

Racine, Yolande, and Robert Storr. Betty Goodwin Works from 1971 to 1987. Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1987. English and French exhibition catalogue.

Richmond, Cindy. Betty Goodwin: Icons. Regina: MacKenzie Art Gallery, 1996. English Exhibition catalogue.

Scott, Kitty. Betty Goodwin. Edmonton: Edmonton Art Gallery, 1990. English exhibition catalogue.

Théberge, Pierre. Le projet de Berlin / The Berlin Project. Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1983. Brochure. English and French translations of Pierre Théberge’s essays for the German language catalogue of O Kanada. Berlin and Ottawa: Akademie der Kunst and Department of External Affairs, 1982.

Tovell, Rosemarie L., and Anne Maheux. The Prints of Betty Goodwin. Ottawa and Toronto/Vancouver: National Gallery of Canada and Douglas & McIntyre, 2002. English and French exhibition catalogues.

Key Articles & Interviews

Betty Goodwin posing with her work *Triptych*, 1986, at her Saint-Laurent Boulevard studio, Montreal, 1986, photograph by Charlotte Rosshandler.

Betty Goodwin with her assistant Scott McMorran and Jessica Bradley in the doorway of Goodwin’s Avenue Coloniale studio, Montreal, c.1998, photographer unknown.

In addition to Robert Enright’s comprehensive interview cited below, there are also interviews with Goodwin by France Morin in the Steel Notes catalogue (National Gallery of Canada, 1989) and by Jessica Bradley in The Art of Betty Goodwin (Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 1998). The major articles on Goodwin by Adele Freedman and Gerald Hannon cited below both draw liberally on interviews with Goodwin.

Also of note are Chantal Pontbriand’s essay on Goodwin in the catalogue for Pluralities 1980 Pluralités (National Gallery of Canada, 1980), Matthew Teitelbaum’s essay on Goodwin’s early work in the Art Gallery of Ontario publication The Art of Betty Goodwin (1998), and a feature newspaper article by Val Ross titled “The Wounding Gifts of Betty Goodwin” in the Globe and Mail, Toronto, November 14, 1998. Of all the critics who addressed Goodwin’s work in the 1980s until the early 2000s, John Bentley Mays remained the most attentive to her exhibitions in Toronto and elsewhere, writing in Toronto’s Globe and Mail from 1980 to 1996, and continuing with articles in The National Post thereafter.

Bogardi, Georges. “The Studio: In her reconfigurations of ideas and found materials, Betty Goodwin transforms life into art.” Canadian Art 11, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 86–93.

Enright, Robert. “A Bloodstream of Images: An Interview with Betty Goodwin.” Border Crossings 14, no. 4, (Fall 1995): 42–53.

Ferguson, Bruce. “Rue Mentana: Betty Goodwin and Marcel Lemyre,” Parachute 20 (Fall 1980): 28–33.

Freedman, Adele. “Swimmer.” Canadian Art 1, no. 2 (Winter 1984): 36–43.

Hannon, Gerald. “Betty Goodwin: Secrets and Lies.” Canadian Art 15, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 50–55.

Ross, Val. “The Wounding Gifts of Betty Goodwin.” Globe and Mail, November 14, 1998.

Set Design & Artists’ Books

Goodwin, Betty, and Paul-Marie Lapointe, Tombeau de René Crevel, 1979. Book of seven etchings on buff wove paper with nineteen poems in a linen-faced box.

Goodwin, Betty, and Denise Desautels, Black Words, 1990. Poems with six laser prints and three original drawings.

Set design for Collisions, a choreographic work by James Kudelka, commissioned by Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Montreal, 1986.

Set design for La tentation de la transparence, 1991, and Bras de plomb, 1993, in collaboration with Montreal choreographer and dancer Paul-André Fortier.

Films & Videos

Horne, Tina, dir. There Is Plenty of Room. Montreal: The Montreal New Film Group, 1989, 60 min.

LaFlamme, Claude, dir. Betty Goodwin: Heart and Soul / Betty Goodwin: le coeur à l’âme. Montreal, 2003, 47 min. Distributed by Groupe ECP.

Lewis, Ann, dir. Betty Goodwin: Pieces of Time. Produced for CFCF-12 Television, Montreal, 1997, Videocassette (VHS), 30 min.