In September, my wife Sharon and I were in Kassel for several days to visit Documenta. We walked through this Parthenon of Books one evening and found it visually striking and poignant. The banned books in their plastic envelopes represented a terrible history of literary oppression and destruction. Historically, book burnings have been held on this very site.
The cultural support organizations established in Canada since the Second World War have reached a stage of maturity which makes them now available for historical analysis.
The art publication artscanada (1943-1982) is identified, in this work, as an institution whose origin and development can be viewed as illuminating the terms of formation and operation which have shaped national arts organizations and the policies which brought them into being and to which they remain related.