“Scaling the pinnacle of art”: learning vacations at the Banff
School of Fine Arts, 1930s-1950s
Karen Wall, Athabasca UniversityPearlAnn Reichwein, University of Alberta
Summer arts courses : “holiday at school”
As an educational / cultural institution, BSFA = tourism generator
As a tourist attraction = holiday with cultural status
public arts education helped to institutionalize landscape art…
…..tourism produced
selected viewpoints on scenery.
• Introduction
BSFA 1930s – 1950s
Were students and instructors in this hybrid setting primarily
(a) (consuming)tourists or (b) (producing) artists, or both?
How did pedagogical practices of
seeing & painting the Park align w/
approaches of tourism and public education?
2. Questions & approach
du Gay, P., Hall, S., Janes, L., Mackay, H., & Negus, K. (1997), p. 3
a. “Tourist gaze”…. b. …revised : mobile & multiple
Records of actual experiences & viewpoints: trace selective processes producing the site as commodity for consumption and (re)production [ Circuit of culture model ]
Western landscape tradition & BNP as “administrative coding of space” (Shields)
3. Alberta 1920s-50s: public education, landscape painting and tourism
a. federal government & cultural agencies (NGC, NFB…)b. Provincial government: education extension & tourism
1946: AB Cultural Dev’t Act (Economic Affairs)
Popular taste : landscape painting scenic routes
BSFA: arts & tourism: visual and literal access
JEH MacDonald, Lake O’Hara 1926
a. Instructors, institutions,
markets, audiences
Landscape production reflected
influence of market values
& adapted imported
(British) techniques
4. How they spent their summer holidays
W. Phillips, Valley of the Ten Peaks, 1928
“Location” as pedagogical & promotional resource….with conceptual & aesthetic challenges …..e.g.:
Students should “scale the pinnacle of Art" away from naturalistic landscapes & objective “compulsions of the mountain environment.”
b. Students: as artist/producers
Landscape & tourist iconography: packaging “beauty spots”
Holiday attitudes in a challenging environment
c. as tourists/ consumers
d. as tourist attractions / hybrids
Subjects & objects of picturing
Paradoxical artistic & touristic experiences
5. Conclusion
As the tourism industry expanded, BSFA was actively involved in producing images that entered into the circulation of fine and commercial art, advertising, educational resources and other institutionalized frameworks.
…we argue the importance of placing the BSFA in the macrostructural context of national institutions, economic and aesthetic movements
BUT
important to consider the casual, satirical and idiosyncratic reflections provided by students as they both reiterated and challenged pedagogical discourses and practices…
…interactive processes of cultural production and consumption
