This Web site includes the original catalogue for the exhibition, photographs of the installations, press clippings, audio recordings, and many other archival documents from Canada's rich cultural heritage.

The digitization of the documents and development of the Web site are the result of a year-long special project that allowed the National Gallery Of Canada to hire staff who worked in collaboration with over 40 Gallery employees. This project was made possible thanks to the Department of Canadian Heritage's Canadian Culture Online funding program, the Canadian Memory Fund, and through the generous support of the National Gallery of Canada Foundation.

"In this groundbreaking initiative, a wide audience can now have access to the original research, publication and installation, as well as to the critical response to the 1975 exhibition Canadian Painting in the Thirties, the first in-depth look at the ideas and issues that influenced Canadian art during this exciting decade," said National Gallery Of Canada Canadian Art curator Charles C. Hill, curator of the original exhibition and catalogue's author. "Not only will users be able to read the long out-of-print catalogue, but they will be able to hear a number of artists and key players in the art world of that era speak about their experiences and observations. This new site brings an important exhibition to life in a virtual way."

Canadian Painting in the Thirties

Presented in art museums across the country by the National Gallery of Canada thirty-three years ago, Canadian Painting in the Thirties is an innovative study of the period, and documents the development of Canadian modernist painting, from the nationalism of earlier schools of landscape painting to the international trends of the 1940s. In addition to the paintings featured in the original exhibition, it features many other related works from the National Gallery's collection. Visitors can explore the cultural, social, economic, and political factors that influenced artistic life in Canada during the 1930s, as they browse through the digitized archives, including:

- 451 pages of the English and French editions of the catalogue from the exhibition Canadian Painting in the Thirties;

- 4,004 works by the artists in the exhibition and their contemporaries;

- 193 articles relating to the critical reception of the exhibition and its tour across Canada;

- 60 installation and documentary photographs;

- the exhibition poster;

- 51 hours of audio tapes of interviews with the artists and their associates;

- 2,900 pages of transcripts of the interviews in English and French; and,

- biographical information forms received by the National Gallery Of Canada from the artists represented on the Web site and photographic portraits of the artists. -- www.gallery.ca