Biography (Jeanne Parkin)

Jeanne Parkin:
Public Art Advocate & Advisor

by Dr. Nancy Campbell

Jeanne Parkin: Public Art Advocate & Advisorby Dr. Nancy Campbell

Chapter

A staunch advocate of contemporary artists and a diehard aficionado of Minimalism and Conceptual art, Jeanne Parkin is one of Canada’s most essential visual art ambassadors. A woman well ahead of her time, she worked both inside and outside major institutions for more than a half-century to ensure that important works and creators were enshrined and celebrated.

Born on December 8, 1922, in Toronto, Jeanne Parkin (née Wormith) may have been predestined for a life in art. A driven and highly competitive child, she demonstrated remarkable aesthetic prowess at a young age. As early as kindergarten, she was constructing elegant structures of multicoloured blocks. She went on to win prizes in primary school contests for her skilful calligraphy, embroidery, and design, and, prefiguring her lifelong fascination with minimalist forms, she had the ability to draw perfect circles and meticulously straight lines by the time she could write her name.

Parkin’s attachment to the visual arts may have been a function of osmosis. Her parents weren’t bohemians by any stretch—her father, Norman, was a lawyer, though he encouraged his daughter’s creative precociousness—but she was exposed to the Group of Seven through her maternal uncle, George Pepper (1903–1962), and his wife, (1898–1994), both of whom were painters. The Peppers lived in the famed Lawren Harris (1885–1970) Studio Building in the city’s Rosedale Valley that also housed the likes of Franklin Carmichael (1890–1945), J.E.H. MacDonald (1873–1932), A.Y. Jackson (1882–1974), Frederick Varley (1881–1969), and Charles Comfort (1900–1994). As a child Parkin played above her aunt and uncle’s workspace; each Christmas she would commune with the titans of Canadian art at their annual holiday bash, listening to Jackson’s tales of his travels through Canada, painting rhythmic landscapes that would become iconographic.

In 1945 Parkin finished a four-year program in art and archaeology at the University of Toronto, which she followed with graduate studies at Harvard University’s Radcliffe College. There, she enrolled in a museum training course with Paul J. Sachs, the director of Harvard’s Fogg Museum. Through Sachs, Parkin had the opportunity to see priceless works from private collections—Flemish masters and rare portraits that had come to the United States during the Second World War for safekeeping. Stored in the vaults under the National Gallery, it was a rare moment to see pieces that were not made available to the public. This was a transformative experience for Parkin, seeing the works up close with an unprecedented immediacy outside of the museum context.

After completing her schooling in the mid-1940s, Parkin returned to Toronto, where she began a crucial association with the Art Gallery of Toronto (now the Art Gallery of Ontario [AGO]), working in exhibitions and education as head of circulating exhibitions and adult education. In 1948 she married architect John C. Parkin. Their children, John, Geoffrey, and Jennifer, were born not long afterward, in 1951, 1953, and 1956, respectively. Motherhood didn’t slow Parkin’s drive. In December 1954 she became a senior member of the Art Gallery of Toronto Women’s Committee, a group who had tremendous sway over the acquisitions and ethos that would help establish the gallery as a player in the realm of contemporary art.

Even within that venerable group, Parkin was a crucial force for positive change. She agitated to shift the narrow focus of the Women’s Committee on the Paris School, suggesting instead that the gallery invest in important work out of Washington and New York. For instance, she advocated for the nascent Pop Art movement, the genesis for Andy Warhol’s Elvis diptych, a piece that anchors the AGO’s contemporary art collection to this day. In 1965, spurred by a similar program out of Buffalo, Parkin established the Women’s Committee Art Rental Service (now AGO Art Rental & Sales) together with Marie Fleming, an initiative intended to allow members of the general public to get their feet wet in the world of contemporary art without having to make a lifetime commitment. It was a great success.

In 1945 Parkin finished a four-year program in art and archaeology at the University of Toronto, which she followed with graduate studies at Harvard University’s Radcliffe College. There, she enrolled in a museum training course with Paul J. Sachs, the director of Harvard’s Fogg Museum. Through Sachs, Parkin had the opportunity to see priceless works from private collections—Flemish masters and rare portraits that had come to the United States during the Second World War for safekeeping. Stored in the vaults under the National Gallery, it was a rare moment to see pieces that were not made available to the public. This was a transformative experience for Parkin, seeing the works up close with an unprecedented immediacy outside of the museum context.

After completing her schooling in the mid-1940s, Parkin returned to Toronto, where she began a crucial association with the Art Gallery of Toronto (now the Art Gallery of Ontario [AGO]), working in exhibitions and education as head of circulating exhibitions and adult education. In 1948 she married architect John C. Parkin. Their children, John, Geoffrey, and Jennifer, were born not long afterward, in 1951, 1953, and 1956, respectively. Motherhood didn’t slow Parkin’s drive. In December 1954 she became a senior member of the Art Gallery of Toronto Women’s Committee, a group who had tremendous sway over the acquisitions and ethos that would help establish the gallery as a player in the realm of contemporary art.

Even within that venerable group, Parkin was a crucial force for positive change. She agitated to shift the narrow focus of the Women’s Committee on the Paris School, suggesting instead that the gallery invest in important work out of Washington and New York. For instance, she advocated for the nascent Pop Art movement, the genesis for Andy Warhol’s Elvis diptych, a piece that anchors the AGO’s contemporary art collection to this day. In 1965, spurred by a similar program out of Buffalo, Parkin established the Women’s Committee Art Rental Service (now AGO Art Rental & Sales) together with Marie Fleming, an initiative intended to allow members of the general public to get their feet wet in the world of contemporary art without having to make a lifetime commitment. It was a great success.