Dennis REID

DENNIS RICHARD REID January 3, 1943 - April 27, 2023M Dennis Reid, C.M., historian of Canadian art, passed away suddenly at St. Joseph's Health Centre, Toronto, of heart failure on April 27th. He leaves his daughters, Jessica (and her husband, Luc) and Naomi (and her husband, Mark); his grandchildren, Sophie and Alex; his sister, Gloria (and her husband, Steve), and his wife, Alison (Kog). Born in Hamilton, Dennis travelled with his mother in his very early years to Lethbridge to be near his father, who was posted there during WWII with the RCAF. Following the war, the family settled in Burlington, where through his school years Dennis became a committed Boy Scout and Eagle Scout and began an enduring connection to Algonquin Park, camping, and nature. The family moved from Burlington in 1959 to Oshawa, where Dennis completed high school. He studied art history at the University of Toronto, receiving his BA, 1966, and MA, 1967. He began his career in 1967 as an assistant curator at the National Gallery in Ottawa, with its first woman director, Jean Sutherland Boggs, remarkable among many other reasons for hiring promising young talent and giving them free rein to flourish. Dennis's first big project was curating the 1970 exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Group of Seven. The catalogue he produced, at the age of 27, is so thoroughly researched from original sources that it remains a landmark of scholarship on the Group, an essential record into the future. Another NGC project involved taking historical Canadian paintings to China in 1975 for a touring exhibition. Enthralled by every aspect of the country, he became a lifelong Sinophile. Later appointed curator of Post-Confederation Canadian Art, he originated group and solo shows at the NGC until 1979, when he was hired as curator of Canadian art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Dennis continued to produce thoughtful exhibitions, both historical and contemporary, at the AGO. One of the most memorable was the groundbreaking From the Four Quarters: Native and European Art in Ontario, 5000 BC to 1867 AD, from 1984, which, as noted then, represented 'the first time two artistic traditions, Native and European, can be seen integrating and influencing one another.' Dennis's deep interest in Indigenous art continued throughout his career, as evidenced in several of his exhibitions and other initiatives at the AGO. In 1998, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada for his contributions to the understanding and appreciation of Canadian art and for bringing recognition to our artists. At the AGO, he moved to the position of chief curator and then director of collections and research. Required to retire from the AGO in 2010, Dennis continued teaching Canadian art history at U of T, a position he had held as a visiting lecturer since 1977, becoming a full professor in 1987, and retiring in 2018. Although no PhDs had been offered in his specialty when he was a student at U of T, he became a generous mentor who supervised young scholars pursuing their own PhDs. Dennis is also the author of A Concise History of Canadian Painting, which has been in print since its first edition in 1973. He will be greatly missed by his art-world colleagues, his friends and his family for his encyclopedic knowledge of all sorts of subjects, his lively conversation, and his fast wit, but we also celebrate a much-enjoyed life of enormous contribution to the country he was so proud to be part of.