ArtNow! Western Voices in Canadian Art: Hon.Patricia Bovey

Patricia Bovey, member of the Senate of Canada (2016-2023) and the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s Director Emerita, is a Winnipeg-based art historian, museologist, author and professor. She has published extensively on western Canadian art, including Western Voices in Canadian Art, (2023);  Pat Martin Bates: Balancing on a Tread, a 2015 Alberta Book Awards’ recipient; and Don Proch: Masking and Mapping, a 2019 Manitoba Book Awards’ finalist.

Director of the Winnipeg Art Gallery (1999-2004); the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (1980-1999);  and founding Director/Curator of St Boniface Hospital’s Buhler Gallery, (2007-2016), she also taught Canadian Art, Curatorial Practice, Cultural Resource Management, and in the University of Winnipeg’s MA Curatorial Practicum. An independent consultant, she assisted arts organizations across Canada with governance, funding and strategic planning. In the Senate she gave voice to the importance of the arts with special Senate exhibitions, programs, reports, and legislation unanimously passed by the Chamber.

Former Chair of the Board of Governors of both the University of Manitoba and Emily Carr University, she served on the National Gallery of Canada’s Board of Trustees; the Board of the Canada Council for the Arts; the Withrow/Richard Federal Task Force on National and Regional Museums; the Eckhardt-Gramatté Foundation Board; and is a past chair of the Canadian Art Museum Directors Organization.

She received a University of Manitoba Honorary Doctor of Laws in 2021, and is a Fellow of both the UK’s Royal Society for the Arts, and the Canadian Museums Association. Her honours include the Canada 125 Medal; the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal; Winnipeg’s Woman of Distinction for the Arts; the Canadian Museums Association Award of Distinguished Service; the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Medal; the Association of Manitoba Museums’ Inaugural Award of Merit; and the Winnipeg Arts Council Making a Difference Award.

She is a member of the Board of the Roberta Bondar Foundation and of Ghana’s Pan African Heritage Museum’s International Curatorial Council and is their recently appointed Special Museum Ambassador. She continues her art history writing, her work on international fraud against Canadian and Indigenous artists, and, with international organizations, creative initiatives on climate change strategies.

Zoom Meeting Information:

Meeting ID: 931 1866 8287

Passcode: 62076693