Interviewing Judith Nasby,
Recipient of the 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award for the Arts by University of McMaster
By Zandra Juarez
As I enter the coziest coffee shop (with very short hours) in downtown Guelph, I realize she’s already there, not just on time, but early. She smiles, gets up from her seat, and gives me a hug. She says she’s ready to order a cup of coffee and a sweet treat. By the way she refers to the staff, I can tell she’s a regular and that they love having her over… My heart and my hands warm up with a steaming cup of coffee on one of the first cold days announcing winter 2025 as we start the interview.
Zandra Juarez: What was it like going back to McMaster on November 20th to receive your award?
Judith Nasby: It was very exciting and memorable, but we actually didn’t go directly to the campus because the ceremony was held at First Ontario Place Concert Hall, which is in downtown Hamilton. It was the 634th convocation for McMaster. I asked the Chancellor how there could possibly be six hundred and thirty four convocations, and she said they used to hold them on campus in smaller locations for the different disciplines. The one I was at was for the Arts, Social Sciences, and Business. The really interesting thing was that there was a banquet dinner afterwards hosted by the President and the Chancellor and I sat at the table with the Alumni Director and my husband David. Across the table I met Jean Ramsey, a retired physician, who is this year’s Recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award for the Sciences. Jean is eighty four years old and I’m in my eightieth year. Jean received hers at the June convocation. There are only two awards in the whole year: one for Sciences and one for the Arts. So, I finally got the picture of what this whole thing means.
ZJ: What does this recognition mean to you, especially after all this time?
JN: I was hired at age twenty-two in 1968 to be the first University of Guelph curator before I graduated in Fine Art from McMaster. I never needed to go for a Masters degree and my career just evolved over those forty-five years. To be recognized by my alma mater was very significant for me because you’d think that they are always going to nominate someone who has a PhD or someone famous like Margaret Atwood. It was a total surprise, of course, and very memorable. To think that they would recognize someone who essentially devoted her entire career to establishing a new institution, a public art gallery for Guelph and the region. My ambition was to create a significant art collection for the campus and for teaching elementary and high school students and to create a vibrant temporary exhibition program because there was no public art gallery in Guelph. And of course I was supported in my ambition by President Winegard and by the Dean of Arts, Murdo MacKinnon.
ZJ: What’s most memorable from your years studying Studio Art and Art History at MacMaster?
JN: When I arrived in Guelph my first job was to organize a temporary exhibition program showing contemporary and historical art. At McMaster I did my SUMA (studio art thesis) in the practice and history of etching. My knowledge of media was very useful. The job of a curator is not just to organize exhibitions, but to write about them, based on interviews with the artists, so that you are not reinterpreting the artist’s work, but presenting it correctly. I had very good professors at McMaster. My main Art History professor, Paul Walton was a Harvard graduate and my main Art Studio teacher, George Wallace, was an intellectual and an artist trained at Trinity College, Dublin. They brought an international approach to my studies that benefited me greatly. I’m completely self-taught as an academic. My first book Irene Avaalaaqiaq: Myth and Reality, I just decided I would send it into McGill-Queen’s University Press and they accepted it, so that just started the whole thing.
ZJ: When did you come to Guelph and did you study at the University of Guelph at all?
JN: I came to Guelph in 1968 but I didn’t take any classes at the U of G. The University was looking for a curator of art, and my name was put forward to Professor Gordon Couling, who was the new Chair of Fine Arts. I guess I sufficiently impressed him, Gordon hired me in March when I was twenty two and before I finished my degree at Mac. I had an office on the first floor of what was then called ‘the arts building’. I was given a half-time secretary who I shared with concertmaster Edith Kidd. Edith was about sixty years of age. So, the interesting thing is that even though I came from a business family, I never paid too much attention to administration, so the first day I needed to write a business letter, I think I dwelt over it for most of the afternoon and then I delivered it to my secretary Sheila and she typed it for me, so that sort of got things started. And then, immediately, I had to form a temporary exhibition program to be shown on the main floor of the arts building, now known as the MacKinnon building, which is the main corridor with brick walls and a glass wall on one side, and not really a gallery at all. I started calling it the University of Guelph Art Gallery, thinking (and wishing) that no one from the Canada Council or the Ontario Arts Council, where I received grants, would ever come to see how bad the space was; but they never did. It just unfolded that way…
That’s how it all started. In 1973, Chief Librarian Florence Partridge let me use part of the main floor of the library for exhibitions until we moved into the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre in 1980.
ZJ: It sounds like you ‘made it happen’, just by calling it by that name.
JN: I was invited to be on the Ontario Association of Art Galleries Board of Directors, all of this helped establish this idea across the province that there was a University of Guelph Art Gallery, even though the space was not very good.
ZJ: I read in a recent article that you increased the collection from 150 to close to 9,000 pieces. Where are they located?
JN: They are stored at the gallery and many are small pieces, Inuit sculptures and indigenous beadwork, for instance. There is a substantial collection of European etchings and engravings stored in cabinets. The larger works are in temperature-controlled storage rooms and others are displayed on campus.
ZJ: I understand that the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre eventually got renamed the Art Gallery of Guelph in 2014, after you retired in 2013.
JN: Originally there were four partners: the City, the University, the County and the School Board. The County said that they wished to leave the partnership so they could fund their own facility in Elora. The name “art centre” was always a problem for me, many people thought it was an academic department or a children’s art program facility, I was always trying to convince people that “this is a public art gallery, to serve the region.” So, we decided we would start the process of changing the name to the Art Gallery of Guelph, and that took quite a long time, going through the provincial legislature, and it finally came about in 2014.
In 1975 we had an opportunity to take over the Macdonald Consolidated School at the corner of College and Gordon street. The school was built in 1904 as a model school for Ontario because it featured a science room, home economics room, indoor lavatories, and experimental gardens. The school was closed in 1967 because it no longer met building code standards. We asked the Macdonald Stewart Foundation in Montreal if they would provide a naming grant to renovate the building to become a public art gallery. That’s why it was called the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre from 1980 to 2014. The origin of the Macdonald Stewart Foundation was a tobacco company owned by Sir William Macdonald who provided money to build the Macdonald Consolidated School. There was a continuing relationship with the Foundation and that’s why they were interested in giving us the funding. It all worked out quite seamlessly. Sir William Macdonald also gave money to build Macdonald Institute for teaching home economics and Macdonald Hall, a women’s residence.
ZJ: In which capacity do you remain in contact with the Art Gallery of Guelph as Curator Emerita?
JN: When I retired in 2013, the Board of Trustees named me curator emerita to recognize my forty-five year career, as founding Director/Curator. I also taught sessional courses in Museum Studies and Indigenous Studies for 20 years for the School of Fine Art and Music using the collections as a focus of my courses. I continue to research and write about the collection.
In 2014, I turned my attention to writing my history/ memoir The Making of a Museum because I felt that my career in essence was very unusual in Canada, especially since there’s a great deal of turnover in these positions. I’d been there for forty-five years, so I had an interesting story to tell about how the whole thing evolved. There are many anecdotes and humorous events in the book. Then I turned my attention to writing a book about the AGG Sculpture Park, discussing the forty-one outdoor sculptures based on interviews with the artists. The Porcupine’s Quill published the book titled Kivioq's Journey and Other Revelations in the Donald Forster Sculpture Park at the Art Gallery of Guelph.
ZJ: I have to say: I recently attended the AGG auction and felt that stepping inside the Judith Nasby Gallery was different this time, much more meaningful, since now I know you, compared to when I didn’t.
JN: The Board of Trustees also decided to name a gallery space on the first floor after me when I was named Curator Emerita in 2013.
ZJ: When did you start writing?
JN: From day one, when I started in fall 1968, I was writing all the time because I was writing curatorial essays and articles for art journals. I have written about 150 publications, some of them larger than others. A great deal of time was spent making sure that I had copyright approval for the use of the photographs of the artwork and I wanted the artists to read what I’ve written to make sure that it was factually correct. So, you always have to be careful about those things- it is quite time consuming.
ZJ: How many books have you written since you retired?
JN: I’ve written two books after my retirement and three before.
ZJ: Is The Making of a Museum your favourite? (about your forty-five year career at the AGG)
JN: I would think so, and there are so many stories, humorous and anecdotal, that I didn’t put in the book. I think now about the tediousness of how I used to write - longhand with a pencil. Because I was always a terrible typist, I would hire a student to dictate to and that would produce the manuscript. I don’t feel so ancient, because I read that Margaret Atwood writes in longhand. For my next project - writing travel memoirs-, I will dictate into my computer
ZJ: What is your biggest concern in terms of Canadian visual arts and where do you see younger artists missing opportunities?
JN: I think there’s a number of serious issues. One of the reasons why I started the sculpture park was because there were hardly any opportunities for an artist to do an outdoor sculpture commission. That’s why the sculpture park is so important, because for many of the artists, these sculptures were their first outdoor work. Today there are still few opportunities for artists to create large scale exterior sculptures.
The opportunity to write exhibitions reviews now is diminished because of the loss of some of our serious art journals. Also, there is a problem with public galleries receiving funding: it has been cut back and we now find that the public galleries are doing fewer exhibitions in a year, and they are having to extend the time period. Many of them are doing half the number, for instance, of the shows we used to do at the art gallery, and it’s also an aspect of not having enough staff.
During my career I spent a lot of time touring exhibitions. We sent exhibitions to four continents including cities like Tokyo, Washington, Caracas, Vienna, and Jaipur to name a few. I believe that once you organize a very fine exhibition: ‘What is the point of just showing it in one place?’ It’s a complete waste, so we put a lot of energy into that and the exhibitions were very well received. There’s a lot less of that activity going on now, due to increases in shipping costs and administrative requirements that have resulted in the diminishing of the traveling exhibition phenomena.
ZJ: How do you see Guelph as an art hub? Are we still an art hub or do you think past times were better?
JN: I think that Guelph has blossomed incredibly. There are many artists and fantastic graduates coming out of the MFA Program at the University of Guelph, some national award winners. Many artists have decided to settle in Guelph because of the tremendous cost of living and having studios in Toronto. Vocamus Writers Community is quite astonishing with the number of authors and publishers, I think the arts community is of a very high level, compared to cities the size of Guelph.
*This interview has been edited and condensed.
Zandra Juarez is a Guelph based writer and literary critic. She is the Director of Communications for Vocamus Writers Community