From growing up in Sandy Bay First Nation / Kaa-wii-kwe-tawang-kak and attending residential school to pursuing extensive academic studies and becoming an internationally recognized artist, Robert Houle (b.1947) has spent four decades reconciling and synthesizing contemporary art trends and Anishnabe traditions. His work uses personal and cultural memory to expose the blind spots in official history as he seeks to decolonize the museum and the self. For more on Robert Houle read Shirley Madill’s Robert Houle: Life & Work.
Shirley Madill is executive director of the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. Prior she was director/curator, Rodman Hall Art Centre; CEO, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; chief curator/director of programming and vice-president, Art Gallery of Hamilton; and curator of contemporary art and photography, Winnipeg Art Gallery.
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The 2023 Canadian Art Inspiration 
The 2022 Canadian Art Inspiration 
Autumn Tigers
The 2021 Canadian Art Inspiration
Mastery in Metal
Through the Lens of C.D. Hoy
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Artist and Abolitionist
Shuvinai Ashoona: Mapping Worlds
Early Snow: Michael Snow 1947-1962
William Kurelek’s Art of Rapture and Reminiscence
Prudence Heward’s Modern Women
Paul-Émile Borduas’s Abstract Revolution
Norval Morrisseau’s Spiritual Vision
Alex Colville: An Everyday Order
Shared History: The Drawings of Pitseolak Ashoona
Art of Perception: Jack Chambers’s Inner Vision
Personal, Local, and National: Greg Curnoe’s Vision
Zacharie Vincent’s Indigenous Legacy
Jock Macdonald: The Search for New Forms of Beauty