François-Marc Gagnon (1935–2019), Director of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art from 2000 to 2011
One of Canada's most influential art historians, François-Marc Gagnon devoted his career to teaching, research, and the dissemination of visual arts knowledge. A dynamic professor, he inspired generations of students, notably at the Université de Montréal, where he taught from 1966 to 2000 and contributed to the development of several research programs.
A prolific scholar, he received the Governor General's Award for his critical biography of Paul-Émile Borduas, published in 1978. Beginning in 1996, he authored more than fifteen major monographs and exhibition catalogs on Canadian art, including Chronique du movement automatiste Québécois 1941-1954 (1998), an award-winning study. He also produced significant research on artists such as Marcel Barbeau, Jacques Hurtubise, Jean Paul Riopelle, and, more recently, Cornelius Krieghoff in connection with the touring exhibition Krieghoff's Canada organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Throughout his career, François-Marc Gagnon worked closely with numerous institutions dedicated to Canadian visual arts. He served on the acquisition committees of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and the National Gallery of Canada. Renowned for his deep knowledge of Canadian art history and exceptional communication skills, he delivered a televised lecture series on Canal Savoir in 1998 titled Introduction to Modern Painting in Québec. Deeply committed to expanding public access to Canada's artistic heritage, he brought his expertise to the Jarislowsky Institute, which he directed from 2000 to 2011, playing a key role in advancing its mission of research, teaching, and the dissemination of Canadian visual arts.
Brief history and evolution of the project
The Paul-Émile Borduas Catalogue Raisonné was conceived by Dr. François-Marc Gagnon (1935-2019) to give Borduas’s painted works the same visibility and sustained scientific attention as his writings—especially Refus Global—have received in Canadian cultural history. Led by Gagnon, the team set out to identify all known works—drawings, watercolours, gouaches, photographs, oil paintings, and sculptures—verify metadata, and document publication and exhibition histories. Supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the project is a major initiative of the Jarislowsky Institute at Concordia University, now conducted in partnership with archivist René St-Pierre and Brendan Reed, who oversees the project’s digital architecture, public scholarly access, and long-term preservation strategy.
Briefly summarized, the project began as a set of research files in FileMaker, later migrated in 2012 to a custom web interface built at Concordia. That same year, St-Pierre, creator of the Archiv’Art platform derived from sculptor Armand Vaillancourt’s catalogue raisonné, received a Fellowship at the Institute to explore how to enhance the Borduas database with professor Gagnon. At the time, the catalogue did not connect “works,” “exhibitions,” and “bibliography.” In 2017, as part of a master’s in Art History at UQAM, St-Pierre developed a proof of concept linking these entities and adding a “documents and archives” section. He presented the prototype publicly, alongside François-Marc Gagnon and Gilles Lapointe, during one of the Afternoon at the Institute events, later serving as Gagnon’s research assistant until 2019. Before his death, Gagnon entrusted Gilles Lapointe, assisted by René St-Pierre, with continuing the catalogue raisonné project and deepening the study of Borduas’s body of works.
In 2023, Lapointe passed the torch to St-Pierre, who established the Borduas Committee to review inclusion requests to the catalogue and advance research. Its connoisseurship relies on collaboration among professionals such as Paul Maréchal, author of several Warhol catalogues raisonnés, and Richard Gagnier, former head of conservation at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
In 2025, the project enters a new phase: migration to a cloud-based, modular, interoperable database aligned with museum and archival systems. With the research corpus now stable yet evolving, the focus turns to data enrichment and discovery tools—ensuring that Borduas’s oeuvre remains accessible, authoritative, and enduring for future generations.
The Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute
The Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art was established in 1998 through the generous financial support of Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky. The Institute seeks to advance the greater appreciation and richer understanding of Canadian visual culture of all eras. To accomplish this goal, the Institute:
- Supports research on Canadian art for the professional scholarly community, for pedagogical purposes at all levels of education, and most importantly for the general public.
- Produces scholarly materials in print and electronic formats such as monographs, journals, bibliographies, catalogue raisonnés, films and videos.
- Maintains a broad and ongoing dialogue within the academic and museum communities on the evolving nature of studies in the visual arts in Canada.
- Collaborates on projects and publications with educational and cultural institutions, as well as the private sector.
- Establishes links to national and international art communities through public events such as conferences and lectures.
