Professor Emerit Barbara Astman wins Governor General’s Award

OCAD University congratulates Professor Emerit Barbara Astman on receiving a 2024 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts for artistic achievement at a ceremony on Nov. 14 at Rideau Hall in Ottawa.

The Canada Council for the Arts announced the awards on March 6. The Governor General’s awards celebrate the vibrant arts community in Canada and recognize remarkable careers in the visual and media arts.

"Being awarded a Governor General's Award is a great honour,” says Astman, who is pictured with Her Excellency the Right Honourable Mary Simon, Governor General of Canada in the photo below.

Astman is one of eight extraordinary artists to have won an award this year. She taught at OCAD U for over four decades, from 1975 to 2021. She was the Chair of the Photography program from 2001 to 2002 and taught in the Faculty of Art from 2001 to 2021.

“For nearly 50 years, visual artist Barbara Astman has been creating a compelling and highly influential body of work in drawing, painting, sculpture/installation and photography,” says Scott McLeod, Director, Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, who nominated Astman for the award.

“Yet to speak of her work in terms of these traditional media designations belies the innovative, experimental and inter-disciplinary nature of her practice. Astman’s work is contemporary in the truest sense of the word. She brings to her art a curiosity about new technological developments, an intimate connection to the present moment, and an active engagement with everyday life.” 

ABOUT BARBARA ASTMAN

Barbara Astman belongs to a visionary group of artists who have continued to radicalize visual culture since the early 1970s by defining new ways of seeing. Over four decades, she has explored a wide range of photo-based media and produced work that has received national and international recognition.

She is represented in important public, corporate and private collections, including the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto, Deutsche Bank in New York City, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England. Her artist’s archives are held in the E.P. Taylor Research Library & Archives at the AGO.

Active in the Toronto arts community, Astman has served on numerous boards and advisory committees, including the AGO Board of Trustees (2009–2013), and was President of the Board of Directors at the Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), in Toronto. Astman is represented by the Corkin Gallery, in Toronto, and the Paul Kyle Gallery, in Vancouver.

Photo credit: Courtesy of the Governor General of Canada.