Talking to a Portrait

Behind the scenes at the world's major art museums, the life of a curator can be thrilling, amusing, disappointing-but never boring.


In these fifteen essays we encounter artists falling in and out of love, family tragedies, the creation of the Stanley Cup, the secrets of Tiffany, Antiques Roadshow, a rootless baroness, the design craze for aluminum, small Japanese boxes called kogos, watercolour sketchbooks of the Canadian north, a beautiful prayer room in Montreal, gondolas flying through windows in Venice, and Moscovites who love Goldfinger.


Pepall's stories sparkle with clarity and leave one with a sense that art is an amazing, worthwhile, occasionally mysterious human activity.


Archival black and white photographs and colour plates-including Edwin Holgate's Ludivine, one of the most beloved and recognizable Canadian portraits ever painted-make this book a must-have for art lovers, students, academics, museum-goers and readers interested in the role art plays in the creation of our lives.