Conservation science reveals the true colours and dynamism of one of Canada’s leading, but too long forgotten, modernist painters.

Among the first artists in Canada to experiment with abstraction, Kathleen Munn was active in Toronto in the 1920s and ’30s; she was considered by some as one of the most advanced, if confounding, artists of her time. Discouraged in part by the dominance of the Group of Seven and landscape painting in Canada, she stopped making art around 1939, and by the time of her death in 1974, she was relatively forgotten. 

Recent conservation work, and research undertaken in partnership with the Canadian Conservation Institute, have yielded significant new understandings of her techniques, methods and materials. We connected with Stephanie Barnes, former AGO Koerner Conservation Fellow, and Georgiana Uhlyarik, AGO Fredrik S. Eaton Curator, Canadian Art, to learn more about their efforts to reveal Munn’s accomplishments.  

If you’re missing a glimpse behind-the-scenes into the details of collections work, read the whole newsy exchange, here (via AGOinsider).