2018 Heller Lecture: Sarah Milroy on Frontier Modernism

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Sarah Milroy (photo by Fred Lum)

The Vancouver Art Gallery announces its seventeenth annual Heller Lecture will be held on Saturday, June 16, with curator and writer Sarah Milroy. The former Globe and Mail chief art critic and Canadian Art editor will reveal the remarkable artistic journey of Canadian painter David Milne. This event coincides with the opening of the David Milne: Modern Painting (on view June 16 to September 9, 2018), curated by Milroy in collaboration with Ian A.C. Dejardin, Executive Director of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

David Milne’s career spanned the first half of the twentieth century, taking him from the bustling sidewalks of New York, to the battlefields of Northern France and Belgium, and back again to the wilderness of Canada and the US. In this much-anticipated presentation, Sarah Milroy will share her insight into Milne’s psyche and artistic processes, exploring his distinctive and seemingly contradictory identity as a reclusive cosmopolitan. She will further illuminate Milne’s approach to modern painting, as he incorporated the ideas of artists such as Matisse, Monet, Bonnard, Cézanne and Brancusi, encountered during his New York years.

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Milroy’s talk will also shed light on Milne’s quest for solitude as he retreated to a life close to nature while maintaining a sophisticated response to the cutting-edge artistic ideas of the day. Like fellow North American artists Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove, Georgia O’Keeffe and Emily Carr, Milne immersed himself in all that was new, retreating to nature to develop an idiosyncratic visual language all his own.

ABOUT THIS YEAR’S HELLER LECTURER

Sarah Milroy is a Toronto-based writer and curator. She served as chief art critic of The Globe and Mail from 2001 to 2011, and as editor of Canadian Art from 1991 to 1996. In recent years, Milroy has curated exhibitions, including From the Forest to the Sea: Emily Carr in British Columbia (2014) and Vanessa Bell (2017), both with Ian C. Dejardin. Milroy has published her writing with leading Canadian periodicals, including The Walrus, Canadian Art, and the Literary Review of Canada. As well, she has contributed essays to many scholarly catalogues, among them publications on Gathie Falk, Jack Chambers, Fred Herzog, Mary Pratt, Greg Curnoe and Jason McLean.