Loren Lerner brings to the Department a cross-disciplinary formation in art history (MA, University of Michigan), library science (MLS, McGill University), and communication studies (PhD, Université de Montréal). Nineteenth- and twentieth-century European, North American and Middle Eastern art are the main areas of her undergraduate teaching, with an emphasis on the history of cities, social issues and collective memory and topics ranging from political consciousness, identity development, gender and class to the modern experience of otherness, nature, and sexuality. In her graduate teaching she has concentrated on ethnic, diasporic and ethical consciousness in North American art-making and the curatorial practices relating to Canadian art. Lerner was editor for Afterimage:Evocations of the Holocaust in Contemporary Canadian Arts and Literature/Rémanences: Evocations de l'Holocauste dans les arts et littérature canadiens contemporains (Montreal: Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies, Concordia University, 2002)and guest curator of Memories and Testimonies/Memoires et Témoignages (Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, April 2002, travelling exhibition). In 2005, Lerner curated the Sam Borenstein retrospective exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Picturing Her: Images of Girlhood / Salut les filles: La jeune fille en images at the McCord Museum. She was the editor of Depicting Canada's Children published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press in 2009. Journal articles and essays from 2007 to 2018 on images of young people appear in Rethinking Professionalism: Essays on Women and Art in Canada, 1850-1970, Canadian Children’s Literature, Journal of Canadian Art History, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Girlhood Studies, Historical Studies in Education, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada,Healing the World’s Children and Girlhood and the Politics of Place. An interest in Canadian art publications, first manifested in Art and Architecture in Canada: A Bibliography and Guide to the Literature (University of Toronto Press, 1991), more recently inspired her article on “William Notman’s Photographic Selections (1863),” analyzing this compilation as the first history of art book published in Canada. This article was published in JCAH/AHAC 33:1 (2012). Research on the intersections of art and religion resulted in her guest editorship, in 2012, of a special issue on contemporary art and religion for JCAH/AHAC33:2 (2012). A pedagogical commitment to student web publishing has guided Lerner’s teaching and the development of websites such as Public Art as Social Intervention: But Now I Have to Speak - Testimonies of Trauma and Resilience funded by Canada Council, Canadian Artists of Eastern European Origin funded by a Canadian Heritage Multiculturalism Canada research grant, Canada’s Got Treasures funded by Industry Canada in association with the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), Family Works funded by the Faculty of Fine Arts and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Metro Borduas, Ensemble,An Exhibition of Art and Jazz, Canadian Portraits, and Picturing Children and Youth: A Canadian Perspective funded by the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute of Studies on Canadian Art as well as Global Engagements in Contemporary Canadian Art: Thirty-Nine Exhibition Essays and Fifty-Five Artists, Rethinking Visual Narration:Myths, Religious Stories, Fairy Tales, Legends and Other Collective Beliefs and Accounts in Contemporary Canadian Art and Envisioning Virtual Exhibitions hosted on the Institute's CCCA Academy website.
Areas of Expertise
- History of Cities
- On-line Curation
- Images of Children and Youth
- Print Culture
- Travel Art
Distinctions & Awards
2004
- The Joseph and Faye Tannenbaum Prize in Scholarship on a Jewish Subject, Canadian Jewish Book Awards, for Afterimage
1998
- Melva Dwyer Award honouring outstanding reference works devoted to the history of the visual arts in Canada, for Canadian Film and Video
1993
- Melva Dwyer Award honouring outstanding reference works devoted to the history of the visual arts in Canada, for Art and Architecture in Canada
1992
- Janet Braide Award, presented for an outstanding contribution to scholarship in the field of Canadian art history
- Thirteenth George Wittenborn Memorial Award, presented for publishing excellence to University of Toronto Press
