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Robert Nelson Markle, Canadian artist, writer, educator and musician, was born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1936 and died in Holstein, Ontario in 1990. He began his studies at the Ontario College of Art (OCA) in 1954, but was expelled before graduation. While at OCA, he met Marlene Shuster, a fellow student, whom he married in 1958. The focus of Markle’s work from his early days was the female nude, particularly burlesque dancers, and Marlene became his primary model and muse. In 1962 Markle had his first group exhibition at The Isaacs Gallery in Toronto, becoming one of the “Isaacs Group” of artists. In 1965, Markle paintings shown in the exhibition Eros ’65 at the Dorothy Cameron Gallery were seized on a charge of obscenity, drawing considerable media attention. In the mid-1960s Markle began to write for magazines such as the Toronto Telegram Showcase, Maclean’s, and Toronto Life, publishing widely on topics as diverse as striptease, hockey, childhood Christmases, and Gordon Lightfoot. Markle also worked extensively as an illustrator, contributing images to magazines and literary journals. His work as an educator included terms at The New School of Art (1966-1977) and Arts’ Sake (1977-1982) as well as OCA and the University of Guelph. From the early 1960s, Markle played tenor saxophone and piano in the Artists’ Jazz Band. In 1970 the Markles moved to a farmhouse outside of Holstein, Ontario, although Robert re-established a studio in Toronto from 1979 to 1982. In 1979, he won a commission to decorate a Toronto hamburger restaurant, which was named Markleangelo’s in his honour. His other large-scale commissions include wall-sculptures for the Ellen Fairclough Building in Hamilton, Ontario, and the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. He executed painted outdoor murals in Owen Sound and Mount Forest, Ontario. Markle was killed in a traffic accident in 1990. Of Mohawk ancestry, Markle used his mother’s spelling of his surname, although it was spelled “Maracle” on his birth certificate. Markle worked primarily in painting and ink drawing, and also explored photography, collage, printmaking, wooden sculpture and neon. He collected folk art, which inspired a number of whirligig works later in his career. His work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada.

John Faichney is a Canadian dancer, television producer and software analyst born in Montreal in 1952. He graduated from Oberlin College where he developed an interest in choreography and dance improvisation. In May 1976 he performed at the Centre for Experimental Art & Communication (CEAC) in Toronto and was invited to join the Centre’s staff. Amongst other activities, he designed printed matter, maintained exchange programs with other artists’ groups, curated an exhibition of artists’ books and managed distribution of mailings and periodicals (including Strike, a quasi monthly newspaper.) An offshoot of the Kensington Art Association, CEAC moved in 1976 to 86 John Street and then to 15 Duncan Street, offering space for performance art, installations, videos and music. Key members of the group were Amerigo Marras, Suber Corley, Bruce Eves and Ron Gillespie (a.k.a Ron Giii); Marras in particular encouraged connections with European and American artists. The group became increasingly politicized and in 1978 its government funding was rescinded. An attempt at self sufficiency by starting a television production studio at 124 Lisgar Street was not sustainable and CEAC disbanded in 1980. John Faichney lives in Kitchener, Ontario, and remains involved with Contact Improvisation.

John Hamilton Bush (1909–1977), primarily known as Jack Bush, was a Canadian painter best known for his Abstract Expressionist style. Born in Toronto, he lived in London, Ont. and Montreal during his early years. Jack Bush began his career in advertising, working in his father’s firm, Rapid Electro Type Company in Montreal. During this time, he studied at the Art Association of Montreal with Edmund Dyonnet and Adam Sherriff Scott. In 1928, he transferred to the company’s office in Toronto, where he took evening classes under Frederick Challener, John Alfsen and Charles Comfort at the Ontario College of Art. Bush’s early work as a painter was influenced by Comfort and the Group of Seven, and throughout the 1930s and ‘40s he produced largely landscape and figurative paintings. His first exhibition was with the Ontario Society of Artists in Toronto in 1936.
In 1934, Jack Bush married Mabel Mills Teakle, a family friend from Montreal, and together they had three sons, Jack Jr (b. 1936), Robert (b. 1938) and Terry (b. 1942). In 1953, dissatisfied with Canada’s place in the international contemporary art scene, Bush and several other Toronto abstract artists founded the group Painters Eleven. William Ronald, another member of Painters Eleven, and an artist who had worked in New York, introduced U.S. art critic Clement Greenberg to the group, which led to a lasting friendship between Bush and Greenberg. The contact with Greenberg in 1957 led to Bush’s international breakthrough in the early 1960s, beginning with his 1962 exhibition at the Robert Elkon Gallery in New York. Between the late 1950s and mid ‘60s, Bush painted in loose brushstrokes with diluted oils, staining paint onto unprimed canvas. In 1966, concerned by the health hazards associated with oil-based paints, he switched to water-based acrylics, less textured than oils but more brightly coloured.
In 1964, Jack Bush’s work was included in Greenberg’s Post-Painterly Abstraction at the Los Angeles County Museum, an exhibition that travelled to Minneapolis and Toronto. Along with Jacques Hurtubise, Bush represented Canada at the Bienal de São Paulo (Brazil) in 1967. In the year preceding his death in 1977 (from a heart attack), he received the Order of Canada. That same year, the Art Gallery of Ontario mounted a retrospective exhibition of his abstract works that travelled to several Canadian galleries. Jack Bush’s work is in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, London’s Tate Gallery and others.

The Canadian Art Club was a Toronto-based exhibiting society active from 1907 to 1915. The club brought together the work of most of the leading Canadian painters and sculptors of the day, largely from Toronto and Montreal but also from abroad, for its annual exhibitions. It was formed by seceding members of the Ontario Society of Artists who rejected what they perceived as that group’s parochialism and low artistic standards. Among the founding artist members were W.E. Atkinson, Archibald Browne, Franklin Brownell, Edmund Morris, Homer Watson (first president of the club) and Curtis Williamson. The artists were soon supported by a considerable number of members who were not artists (referred to as ‘lay members’ in documents). Part of the club’s purpose was to encourage expatriate Canadian artists, such as J. W. Morrice and Clarence Gagnon, to associate with the club and to exhibit in Canada. It succeeded in affording sympathetic reception in Toronto for prominent Quebec artists of the time, like Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté. After the death in 1913 of Edmund Morris, honorary secretary and chief organizer, the club declined amid disputes between members until it ceased to function in 1915. The Canadian Art Club was formally dissolved about 1933.

The Art Institute of Ontario (AIO) was incorporated in 1951 to circulate art exhibitions, lecturers, and instructional programmes to venues in smaller communities. The idea of an art institute had been discussed informally as early as 1948, and the Art Gallery of Toronto had organized circulating exhibitions. The AIO was formed when a grant from the Ontario Department of Education made it possible to sponsor a travelling exhibition throughout the province. Later grants from the Atkinson Foundation, the Canada Council, and the Province of Ontario Council for the Arts supported AIO’s operations. The AIO was an alliance of several Ontario visual arts institutions and organizations. Its founding members were the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Art Gallery of Toronto (now Art Gallery of Ontario), Hart House (University of Toronto), London Public Library & Art Museum, National Gallery of Canada, Ontario Association of Architects, Ontario Society of Artists, Royal Ontario Museum, Willistead Library and Art Gallery (Windsor) and the Windsor Art Association. The AIO maintained close ties with the Art Gallery of Ontario throughout its existence. It was absorbed into the extension programme of the AGO in 1968.

Factory 77, initially known as Galerie Scollard, was a Toronto artist-run gallery focused on art education which operated between 1976 and 1982. Galerie Scollard was established in Toronto in 1976 as a non- profit charitable organization by Dushka Arezina, a Yugoslavian emigrée, artist, and art historian. It was coined a “centre for education in vision” and was located on Scollard Street in Toronto. The gallery was operated by a Board of Directors of which Harvey Cowan was the chairperson and Kenneth Lund the president. Dushka Arezina sat on the Board of Directors as treasurer and was also the gallery’s executive director. Galerie Scollard ceased opera tions under that name in 1978 and was re-established as Factory 77 in November 1978 upon moving into a former carpet factory at 77 Mowat Ave. in Toronto’s Parkdale area. Factory 77’s operations were overseen by Arezina and a Board of Directors chaired by Lund, a Toronto lawyer. It aimed to present a broad view of contemporary visual arts by exhibiting established artists together with emerging ones. In the years between 1978 and 1982, the gallery mounted more than 13 exhibitions per year, featuring prominent Canadian artists such as Mary and Christopher Pratt, Lynn Do noghue, and Ken Danby. The gallery also placed significant emphasis on exhibitions by Eastern European artists such as Jiri Ladocha. The gallery aimed to foster student participation through exhibits of student and youth work, and placed significant focus on art education and appreciation outreach programs in elementary and secondary schools in the Toronto area. Due to financial and administrative difficulties, Factory 77 ceased operations permanently in February 1982.

The Gershon Iskowitz Foundation was started by artist Gershon Iskowitz in 1985, with the mandate of awarding the Gershon Iskowitz Prize to a mature practising artist; since 2007 the Foundation has partnered with the Art Gallery of Ontario to administer the Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO.

Goldwin Smith (1823-1910) was a prominent journalist, academic and liberal reformer who spent the latter part of his life in Toronto. Born in Reading, England, he was educated at Eton College and Oxford University, and was the Regius Professor of History at Oxford from 1858 to 1866. Smith began to publish widely on history and political reform. He moved to the United States in 1868, and taught briefly at Cornell University, to which he retained a connection for the rest of his life. He moved to Toronto in 1871, and married Harriet Elizabeth Mann (née Dixon) the widow of William Henry Boulton, in 1875. Smith thus became master of the Grange house and estate in central Toronto, and became a pillar of Toronto society. His journalistic career included a brief employment at the Globe, after which he joined independent publishing ventures including the Canadian Monthly and National Review and the Evening Telegram. He then published his own journal, the Bystander, sporadically between 1879 and 1890. Smith also published widely in other local and international news journals. He took part in important civic and educational reform initiatives, including serving on the new board of the University of Toronto. The Grange remained his wife's property and was willed by her to the city of Toronto to serve as a public art gallery, later becoming the first home of the Art Gallery of Ontario.