Peggy Gale
Peggy Gale is an independent Canadian curator, writer, and editor. Gale studied Art History and received her Honours Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History from the University of Toronto in 1967. Gale has published extensively on time-based works by contemporary artists in numerous magazines and exhibition catalogues. She was editor of "Artists Talk 1969-1977", from The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax (2004) and in 2006, she was awarded the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts. Gale was the co-curator for "Archival Dialogues: Reading the Black  Star Collection" in 2012 and later for the Biennale de Montréal 2014, "L’avenir (looking forward)", at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. Gale is a member of IKT (International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art), AICA (International Association of Art Critics), The Writers' Union of Canada, and has been a contributing editor of Canadian Art since 1986. Early career. From 1967–74 Gale was the Education Officer at the Art Gallery of Ontario. While at the AGO, Gale organized the exhibition, "Videoscape" (1974), the first museum exhibition to recognize video as an artistic practice. In 1974-75, Gale was the Assistant  Film and Video officer at the Canada Council for the Arts (Ottawa), then returned to Toronto as Video and Film Director at Art Metropole 1975-79. She was the Executive Director of one of the oldest artist run centres in Canada, A Space, from 1979-81. In 1981 Gale resigned her position at A Space, and as an independent, she was curator for performance art in "OKanada" at Akademie der Künste in Berlin (1982–83). Later career. Since 1981, Gale has continued to be a full-time independent critic and has curated exhibitions at Art Metropole ("Museums by Artists", 1983), National  Gallery of Canada ("Electronic Landscapes," 1989), Canadian Embassy, Tokyo ("Northern Lights," 1991), "Tout le temps/ Every Time" for "La Biennale de Montréal 2000", the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art ("Donigan Cumming: Moving Pictures," 2005), and many others. In 1994, Gale and Lisa Steele co edited "Video re/View: The (best) Source for Critical Writings on Canadian Artists’ Video", a joint project between Vtape and Art Metropole. Her collected essays investigating the narrative basis of artists' video, "Videotexts," was published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press in 1995. Beginning in 2005, Gale was the lead researcher and writer for "Video Art in  Canada", a website that was part of the Virtual Museum of Canada. It is now available through Vtape at www.videoartincanada.ca. Gale also co-curated "Live With Culture" in 2006 with Fern Bayer and Chrysanne Stathacos for the city of Toronto's inaugural "Nuit Blanche" in Zone A: Bloor/Yorkville area. She was a part of "Think:Film - International Experimental Cinema Congress 2012", an international symposium at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. In October 2014- January 2015, Gale co-curated and conceptualized the "Biennale de Montréal 2014, L'avenir (looking forward)" with Gregory Burke at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal in  collaboration with Lesley Johnstone and Mark Lanctôt. Gale continues to be active as a curator, writer, consultant, and mentor and her papers have been accepted into the archives at the Art Gallery of Ontario.