Catharine Margaret Mastin (born August 1, 1963) is a Canadian curator. She is a specialist in modern and contemporary art with an emphasis on gender and women's art practices. She has worked at the

Art Gallery of Windsor Art Windsor-Essex (AWE) (formerly known as the Art Gallery of Windsor) is a not-for-profit art institute in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Established in 1943, the gallery has a mandate as a public art space to show significant works of art by local ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

and the

Glenbow Museum The Glenbow Museum is an art and history regional museum in the city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The museum focuses on Western Canadian history and culture, including Indigenous perspectives. The Glenbow was established as a private non-profi ...

Calgary Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, makin ...

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

. At the Art Gallery of Windsor, she was curator, arts administrator and executive director (2010-2020). She is an Adjunct Member of the Faculty of Graduate Studies in Art History at

York University York University (french: Université York), also known as YorkU or simply YU, is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's fourth-largest university, and it has approximately 55,700 students, 7,0 ...

. Mastin also curated the exhibition "Franklin Carmichael: Portrait of a Spiritualist", an exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa which toured Canada between 1999 and 2001.

Early life and education

Mastin grew up in Toronto and went to

for both her Bachelor of Fine Arts and her master's degree in art history and architecture. In 2012, the

University of Alberta The University of Alberta, also known as U of A or UAlberta, is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford,"A Gentleman of Strathcona – Alexander Cameron Rutherfor ...

awarded her a PhD in women’s history with the dissertation ''Beyond ‘the Artist's Wife’: Women in Artist-Couple Marriage and the Exhibition Experience in Postwar Canada.'' Her doctoral writing was included in ''Mary Pratt'' (2013, 2nd edition 2016). Mastin's grandfather is the artist

Franklin Carmichael Franklin Carmichael (May 4, 1890 – October 24, 1945) was a Canadian artist and member of the Group of Seven. Though he was primarily famous for his use of watercolours, he also used oil paints, charcoal and other media to capture the Ontario ...

Career

In her over 30-year curatorial career, Mastin has curated more than one hundred exhibitions. She was hired in 1988 as curator of Canadian Art at the

. In 1992, organized an exhibition and participated in the writing of the multi-author book, ''‘The Talented Intruder’: Wyndham Lewis in Canada, 1939-1945'', which was praised by English reviewers as making progress in understanding Lewis's Canadian years. From 1995 until 2006, needing a broader field of vision, she worked at the

as senior art curator and twice interim vice-president (exhibitions and collections). In 1996, she co-founded the Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art which she co-curated in 1996 and 1998. She also curated exhibitions of

, including one for the

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the l ...

, Ottawa, (2001) which toured Canada through 2003, and the

Art Gallery of Sudbury The Art Gallery of Sudbury is an art gallery in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. Established in 1967 by the city's chamber of commerce under the Canadian Centennial projects, the gallery is located in the historic turn of the century arts and c ...

(2005). In 2002, she curated the major travelling exhibition, ''The Group of Seven in Western Canada'', accompanied by the first comprehensive book on the subject which she edited and for which she wrote the introductory essay. From 2010 till 2020, Mastin served as the sixth executive director of the

during which time she led the gallery through a significant organizational change process and its 75th anniversary. Under her leadership, the gallery earned an unprecedented 20 performance awards between 2013 and 2019 for tourism, partnerships, exhibitions, writing, staff excellence, volunteerism and community recognition. She launched the digitization initiative, the on-line collections exhibition publishing program, and oversaw three multi-year permanent collection exhibitions including the Art Gallery of Windsor collection at 75 Years (2018-2021) which strengthened the voices of indigenous artists and women with new acquisitions. In

Windsor, Ontario Windsor is a city in southwestern Ontario, Canada, on the south bank of the Detroit River directly across from Detroit, Michigan, United States. Geographically located within but administratively independent of Essex County, it is the souther ...

, her exhibition of photographer ''Brenda Francis Pelkey: A

Retrospective A retrospective (from Latin ''retrospectare'', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in medicine, software development, popu ...

'' toured Canada (2016-2018), along with the accompanying multi-authored monograph, '' Territories: Brenda Francis Pelkey'' (2017). Critics considered both show and book thoughtful and definitive. She also has written numerous articles for catalogues such as ones on ''

Frances Loring Frances Norma Loring LL.D. (October 14, 1887– February 5, 1968) was a Canadian sculptor. Career Loring studied in Europe before enrolling at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied with Lorado Taft. She was a member of both the Royal C ...

and

Florence Wyle Florence Wyle (November 14, 1881 – January 14, 1968) was an American-Canadian sculptor, designer and poet; a pioneer of the Canadian art scene. She practiced chiefly in Toronto, living and working with her partner Frances Loring, with whom she ...

'' in ''Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Movement''. In 2022, she wrote ''Marion Nicoll: Life and Work'' for the Art Canada Institute, available online. In 2023, she guest-curated ''Cobalt: A Mining Town and the Canadian Imagination'', featuring the work of Canadian modern artists who visited the town between the First and Second World Wars, for the

McMichael Canadian Art Collection The McMichael Canadian Art Collection (MCAC) is an art museum in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada. The museum is located on a property in Kleinburg, an unincorporated village in Vaughan. The property includes the museum's main building, a sculpture garde ...

. Since 2014 she has served as an advisor for the Gail and Stephen Jarislowsky Institute for Canadian Art as well as serving on the jury for Canada’s national portrait competition, the Kingston Prize in 2017 and in 2019. In 2017, Mastin volunteered for five years of service on the board of directors of the

Ontario Association of Art Galleries The Galeries Ontario / Ontario Galleries (GOG), formerly Ontario Association of Art Galleries / Association Ontarienne des Galeries d’Art (OAAG/AOGA), was established in 1968 to encourage development of public art galleries, art museums, community ...

including a term as president (2017-2018). In 2022, she served as an Adjunct Member in the Faculty of Graduate Studies in Art History at

York University, Toronto York University (french: Université York), also known as YorkU or simply YU, is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's fourth-largest university, and it has approximately 55,700 students, 7,000 faculty and staf ...

, Canada.

Honours and awards

In 1993 and 1995 her writing projects on

Wyndham Lewis Percy Wyndham Lewis (18 November 1882 – 7 March 1957) was a British writer, painter and critic. He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art and edited ''BLAST,'' the literary magazine of the Vorticists. His novels include ''Tarr'' ( ...

and colonial narratives in public art collections earned her curatorial writing awards from the

. In 1998, she was a two-time nominee for ''Canada’s Top 40 under 40 Award'' for outstanding professionals in all sectors. Her book on ''The Group of Seven in Western Canada'' was the first multi-authored volume on an important Canadian art movement and the also one of the first volumes on the Group of Seven to include female writers; it remained on the Canadian best-seller list through the summer of 2002 and was released in a second edition in 2007.

References

Bibliography

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mastin, Catharine 1963 births Living people Canadian art curators People from Toronto York University alumni University of Alberta alumni Canadian art historians Canadian women curators Canadian feminists women museum directors Directors of museums in Canada Canadian non-fiction writers Canadian women non-fiction writers Art museum people