About:
Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, Winnipeg
Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, Montreal
The Canadian Art Database Project, is now permanently housed at Concordia University in Montreal, under the auspices of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, which is a Research Centre within the Faculty of Fine Arts. Created by the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art in 1996, the project continues to be a work in progress. It is the prime web resource that focuses on contemporary Canadian art production and the recent history of Canadian art, assembling a growing collection of previously inaccessible or hard-to-find, information on Canadian art in all media [images, texts, media works, and related ephemera] from a variety of sources across Canada into a searchable, bilingual database. The ongoing project is documenting some important Canadian art institutions and organizations that have helped shape the Canadian art scene since the 1960s, along with the careers of some of Canada's leading professional artists, designers, art writers and curators. The Canadian Art Database Project currently holds:
- more than 62,000 images, 800 media clips and 3,000 texts by over 850 prominent Canadian visual, media and performance artists, graphic designers, writers and curators;
- a searchable Canadian Art Bibliography [currently holding 9,000+ references];
- a searchable Canadian Art Chronology [currently holding 6,000+ references];
- a developing series of Video Portraits profiling artists, graphic designers and art personalities;
- several related projects that complement the core archive.
Contact:
Bill Kirby
Director, Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art
Research Affiliate, Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, Concordia University. Telephone: 204.421.7100; E-mail: kirby@ccca.ca
The CCCA Canadian Art Database has become an essential interactive teaching resource about Canadian visual culture in secondary and post-secondary classrooms across Canada and abroad. It is attracting a large and varied international audience – receiving daily averages of some 2,300 visits [60,000+ per month], and 100,000 hits [3 million+ per month]. There are more than 30,000 unique visitors per month from visitors in more than 100 countries. The CCCA Database employs a unique ‘artist-empowered’ copyright model in which the copyright on all materials included in the project is retained by the individual creators and authors. Additional materials have all been cleared by the respective copyright holders. The content is housed in the MIMSY Information Management System, which has been specially customized for the CCCA Database. Users are able to freely view and use [but not alter] the material presented on the CCCA website solely for educational and research purposes. We welcome enquiries from any other researchers who might wish to work with the CCCA Canadian Art Database Project.