Edited by Sylvie Lacerte with contributions by Gilles Daigneault, Vera Frenkel, Manuel Mathieu, Caroline Monnet, Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf and Marc Séguin

Marking the centenary of his birth, the exhibition Riopelle: Crossroads in Time introduces Jean Paul Riopelle as a tireless experimenter and innovator, anchored in the contemporary realm. Drawing on the artist’s work across various mediums and materials, guest curator Sylvie Lacerte paints a portrait of Riopelle as a visionary trailblazer. Offering a unique take on this famed Canadian artist, this retrospective presents his acclaimed works alongside creations rarely or never before shown in public.

This richly illustrated catalogue features essays by art specialists and artists who reflect on Riopelle’s legacy as they look at his work. Discover the full force of his legendary influence on both his contemporaries and artists working today, all of whom represent a broad range of cultural and aesthetic perspectives.

Hardcover | 208 pages 
25.5 x 30.5 cm (10 x 12 in.) 
Publication Date: 2023

Karen Duffek 

This catalogue features thirty paintings and sculptures by Robert Davidson, a leading contemporary Haida artist who works to expand and transform his understanding of Haida art and cultural practice through engagement with abstraction, reclaiming cultural knowledge, and developing a personal iconography in his art. 

Paper | 64 pages 
20.5 x 25.5 cm (8 x 11 in.) 
Publication Date: 2004
Available in French only

Denise Leclerc, Marion Barclay 

This exhibition catalogue seeks to explore the North American career of one of this century's outstanding sculptors in the technique of welded metal who has been working in the industry since the end of the 1950s.

Paper | 196 pages 
20.5 x 29 cm (8 x 11.4 in.) 
Publication Date: 1999

Denise Leclerc, Marion Barclay 

This exhibition catalogue seeks to explore the North American career of one of this century's outstanding sculptors in the technique of welded metal who has been working in the industry since the end of the 1950s.

Paper | 196 pages 
20.5 x 29 cm (8 x 11.4 in.) 
Publication Date: 1999

Greg A. Hill, Candice Hopkins, Christine Lalonde 

The catalogue Sakahàn—meaning “to light [a fire]” in the language of the Algonquin peoples—focuses on the 2013 exhibition which brought together more than 150 works of recent Indigenous art by over 80 artists from 16 countries, including impressive installations created specifically for the project. Poetic, unexpected and challenging, the artworks document and interrogate distinct cultural and social issues. 

FEATURED ARTISTS: Vernon Ah Kee, Maria Thereza Alves, Pia Arke, Arnait Video Productions, Arnaqurq Ashevak, Shuvinai and John Noesthedan Ashoona, Sonny Assu, Mary Anne Barkhouse, Nanobah Becker, Christi Belcourt, Richard Bell, Rebecca Belmore, Corey and Larissa Healey Bulpitt, Andrea Carlson, Abraham & Jimena Mendoza Cruzvillegas, Cup'luaq (Jack Dalton), Beau Dick, Jimmie Durham, Suresh Kumar Dhurve, Nicholas Galanin, Billy Gauthier, Regina-José Galindo, Jeffrey Gibson, Daniel Guzman, Julie Edel Hardenberg, Marja Helander, Inuk Silis Høegh, Geir Tore Holm, Terrance Houle, Bayrol Jimenez, Jonathan Jones, Brian Jungen, Toru Kaizawa, Sonya Kelliher-Combs, Shigeyuki Kihara, Walis Labai, EN Lei, Omero Leyva, César López, Erica Lord, Jimmy Manning, Teresa Margolles, Da-Ka-Xeen Mehner, Danie Mellor, Alan Michelson, Kent Monkman, Wangechi Mutu, Nadia Myre, Shelley Niro, William Noah, Fiona Pardington, Michael Parekowhai, Viggo Pederson, Outi Pieski, Jamasee Padluq Pitseolak, Tim Pitseolak, Edward Poitras, Annie Pootoogook, Itee Pootoogook, Rachel and Brett Graham Rakena, Abel Rodriguez, Gjert Rognli, Jangarh Singh Shyam, Mayank Shyam, Venkat Raman Singh Shyam, Greg Staats, Yama Taru, Jeff Thomas, Warwick Thornton, Jutai Toonoo, Maka'i Tubbs, Ingunn Utsij, Taika Waititi, Marie Watt, Steven Yazzie and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun.

Softcover | 288 pages
24.5 x 21 x 2 cm (9.6 x 8.3 x 0.8 in.)
Publication Date: 2013

Available in French only

Heather Igloliorte

Nunatsiavut, the Inuit region of Canada that achieved self-government in 2005, produces art that is distinct within the world of Canadian and circumpolar Inuit art. The world's most southerly population of Inuit, the coastal people of Nunatsiavut have always lived both above and below the tree line, and Inuit artists and craftspeople from Nunatsiavut have had access to a diverse range of Arctic and Subarctic flora and fauna, from which they have produced a stunningly diverse range of work.

Artists from the territory have traditionally used stone and woods for carving; fur, hide, and sealskin for wearable art; and saltwater seagrass for basketry, as well as wool, metal, cloth, beads, and paper. In recent decades, they have produced work in a variety of contemporary art media, including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, video, and ceramics, while also working with traditional materials in new and unexpected ways.

SakKijâjuk. Art et artisanat du Nunatsiavut is the first major publication on the art of the Labrador Inuit. Designed to accompany a major touring exhibition organized by The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery of St. John's, the book features more than 80 reproductions of work by 45 different artists, profiles of the featured artists, and a major essay on the art of Nunatsiavut by Heather Igloliorte.

SakKijâjuk — "to be visible" in the Nunatsiavut dialect of Inuktitut — provides an opportunity for readers, collectors, art historians, and art aficionados from the South and the North to come into intimate contact with the distinctive, innovative, and always breathtaking work of the contemporary Inuit artists and craftspeople of Nunatsiavut.

Hardcover | 194 pages 
Publication Date: 2017

Sarah Milroy

Sans invitation : Les artistes canadiennes de la modernité offers commentary on a generation of extraordinary women painters, photographers, sculptors, architects and filmmakers from a century ago — pioneers who opened new frontiers for women artists in Canada — as well as works made by their Indigenous female contemporaries working in traditional media, for a cross-country snapshot of female creativity in this dynamic modern moment.

Hardcover | 320 pages
Publication Date: 2021

Harry Malcolmson

The 1960s transformed art in Canada. The Scene traces the remarkable reshaping of the Canadian art landscape during that era. Written by renowned art critic Harry Malcolmson, the book offers a captivating insider’s perspective on how a surge of artists, galleries, collectors, and critics propelled Canadian art into the global spotlight.

Malcolmson identifies the catalysts that ignited this artistic renaissance, including an outpouring of pride in the country linked to Canada's Centennial, Expos ’67, and the Toronto City Hall. With rich anecdotes and insights, the book paints a comprehensive portrait of the era, while showcasing over twenty portraits of influential Canadian artists. Richly illustrated, the book illuminates the totality of the Scene’s evolution and delves into the impact of Canadian nationalism and economic prosperity on the Scene. It examines the rise of contemporary institutions, such as the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada, capturing the emergence of a modern Canadian identity. Ultimately, The Scene stands as a unique testament to a pivotal moment in cultural history, capturing the essence of the most impactful decade in the history of art in Canada.

Hardcover | 288 pages
20.3 x 25.4 cm (8 x 10 in.) 
Publication Date: 2025

Josée Drouin-Brisebois

As the commissioning institution for the 55th International Art Exhibition, the National Gallery of Canada presents the work of Shary Boyle, a consummate object maker who uses imaginary narratives to explore human psychological and emotional states. The catalogue highlights the artist’s practice, which spans a diversity of media, including fine craft, drawing, sculpture, experimental performance and immersive installations.

Paper | 192 pages 
20 x 29 cm (7.8 x 11.4 in.) 
Publication Date: 2013

English, French and Italian

Melissa Bennett, Greg Hill, and David W. Penney

Shelley Niro is widely known for her ability to explore Traditional Stories, transgress boundaries, and embody the ethos of her matriarchal culture. A member of the Six Nations Reserve, Turtle Clan, Bay of Quinte Mohawk, she uses a wide variety of media, including photography, installation, film, and painting to bring greater visibility to Indigenous women and girls.

Pushing the limits of photography, Niro incorporates imagery from Traditional Stories to focus on contemporary subjects with wit, irony, and parody. Throughout her work — in her portraiture, sculptures, landscape paintings, photography, and film and video work — Niro challenges common preconceptions about gender, culture, and Indigenous Peoples.

Hardcover | 304 pages
21.5 x 25 cm (8.1 x 9.8 in.)
Publication Date: 2023

Published by the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and distributed by Goose Lane Editions.

Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch accompanies an international touring exhibition organized by the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian with the collaboration of the National Gallery of Canada.

Melissa Bennett, Greg Hill, and David W. Penney

Shelley Niro is widely known for her ability to explore Traditional Stories, transgress boundaries, and embody the ethos of her matriarchal culture. A member of the Six Nations Reserve, Turtle Clan, Bay of Quinte Mohawk, she uses a wide variety of media, including photography, installation, film, and painting to bring greater visibility to Indigenous women and girls.

Pushing the limits of photography, Niro incorporates imagery from Traditional Stories to focus on contemporary subjects with wit, irony, and parody. Throughout her work — in her portraiture, sculptures, landscape paintings, photography, and film and video work — Niro challenges common preconceptions about gender, culture, and Indigenous Peoples.

Hardcover | 304 pages
21.5 x 25 cm (8.1 x 9.8 in.)
Publication Date: 2023

Published by the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and distributed by Goose Lane Editions.

Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch accompanies an international touring exhibition organized by the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian with the collaboration of the National Gallery of Canada.

Shine a Light Surgir de l'ombre: Canadian Biennial 2014 (Bilingual)

Josée Drouin-Brisebois, Greg Hill, Andrea Kunard, Jonathan Shaughnessy and Rhiannon Vogl

Shine a Light Surgir de l’ombre highlights an exemplar selection of recent acquisitions to the National Gallery of Canada’s Canadian Contemporary, Indigenous and Photographs holdings. This biennial showcases the production of twenty-six artists from different generations and backgrounds, and features over eighty works ranging from film and video installations to sculptures, paintings, drawings and photographs. Often looking to past events, literature, films, places, cultural movements and traditions, the artists in the exhibition are very much ingrained in issues of the present day. Their works encourage us to reconsider time and the writing of history, our relationship to the natural world, the powerful role of images in how information is communicated, and how we perceive and interpret accepted facts.

Featured artists: David Armstrong Six, Shuvinai Ashoona, Nicolas Baier, Shary Boyle, Edward Burtynsky, Tammi Campbell, Mario Doucette, Geoffrey Farmer, David Hartt, Isabelle Hayeur, Phillippa Jones, Stéphane La Rue, Rita Letendre, An Te Liu, David McMillan, Damian Moppett, Luke Parnell, Vanessa Paschakarnis, Ed Pien, Tim Pitsiulak, Kelly Richardson, Jeremy Shaw, Althea Thauberger, Jutai Toonoo, Howie Tsui, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun

Softcover | 264 pages
20.5 x 27.3 cm (8 x 10.75 in.)
Publication Date: 2014

Drawing on the National Gallery of Canada’s collection, alongside works from other institutions and community archives, this catalogue explores the photographic studio as more than a site of image-making, but as a space of exchange and creative negotiation. From early daguerreotypes and 19th-century studio practices to contemporary approaches, it shows how artists, sitters, and photographers have used the camera to express identity, heritage, and voice across diverse cultural contexts. More than any other medium, photography offers the possibility of being seen, remembered, and affirmed. Combined, these images reveal the studio as a powerful site of agency, where those before the lens can declare themselves positively to the world. 

300 pages 
22.9 x 29.2 cm (9 x 11.5 in.) 
Publication date: 2026

Edited by Wahsontiio Cross
With contributions by Mojeanne Sarah Behzadi, Richard William Hill and Cheryl Sim 

Skawennati’s practice explores Indigenous futures through the lens of a Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) woman and cyberpunk avatar, blending Hotinonshón:ni storytelling with digital media to create powerful, visionary narratives. Using machinimas and machinimagraphs (movies and still images made in virtual environments), sculpture, textiles and performance, she reimagines a world where Indigenous Peoples thrive. Her work transforms personal and communal hopes into new realities – spaces that empower, reclaim ways of being and challenge historical narratives.

The most comprehensive book on her career to date, Skawennati. Bienvenue dans la maison des rêves features vibrant reproductions of key works alongside critical essays examining her impact. The title references notions of home, a child’s dollhouse, and the longhouse – central to Hotinonshón:ni culture. The publication invites readers to explore a future where Indigenous Peoples lead and shape our collective worldview.

Softcover | 136 pages
22.9 × 27.9 cm (9 × 11 in.)
Publication Date: 2025

Edited by Wahsontiio Cross
With contributions by Mojeanne Sarah Behzadi, Richard William Hill and Cheryl Sim 

Skawennati’s practice explores Indigenous futures through the lens of a Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) woman and cyberpunk avatar, blending Hotinonshón:ni storytelling with digital media to create powerful, visionary narratives. Using machinimas and machinimagraphs (movies and still images made in virtual environments), sculpture, textiles and performance, she reimagines a world where Indigenous Peoples thrive. Her work transforms personal and communal hopes into new realities – spaces that empower, reclaim ways of being and challenge historical narratives.

The most comprehensive book on her career to date, Skawennati: Welcome to the Dreamhouse features vibrant reproductions of key works alongside critical essays examining her impact. The title references notions of home, a child’s dollhouse, and the longhouse – central to Hotinonshón:ni culture. The publication invites readers to explore a future where Indigenous Peoples lead and shape our collective worldview.

Softcover | 136 pages
22.9 × 27.9 cm (9 × 11 in.)
Publication Date: 2025

Edited by Reid Shier with contributions by Ma’an Abu Taleb, Erika Balsom, Samir Gandesha, and George E. Lewis.

Stan Douglas, one of the most compelling voices in Canadian contemporary art, has long explored critical sociocultural and political change. His exhibition for the 59th Biennale di Venezia, 2011 ≠ 1848, reflects upon the language of protest, revolution and the uprisings witnessed across the globe in 2011. Douglas’ four large-scale hybrid documentary photographs re-stage protests in Tunis, London, New York and Vancouver, and his two-channel HD video, ISDN, presents Grime and Mahraganat rappers exchanging subversive lyrics between studios in London and Cairo.

This stunning 288-page illustrated catalogue, published in English, French and Arabic, features some 100 full-colour detailed images that meticulously capture behind-the-scenes views of Douglas’ elaborate productions. Essays by leading international cultural thinkers examine the artist’s work in relation to music, political economy, contemporary media theory and the rise of Grime and Mahraganat.

Hardcover | 288 pages (100 illustrations)
24.8 x 27.5 cm (9.8 x 10.8 in.)
English, French and Arabic
Publication Date: 2022

Josée Drouin-Brisebois

The National Gallery of Canada is the commissioning institution for the 54th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale featuring the work of acclaimed artist Steven Shearer. Under its pop-cultural surface, Shearer’s work is surprisingly complex and insightful. By showing us aspects of popular culture from many different points of view, he exposes the false hierarchy of high and low art and prompts us to consider the more interesting differences between the cultural industries and the art world. The generously-illustrated catalogue published to accompany the Venice exhibition highlights Shearer’s paintings, text-based works, sculptures and photographic compilations.

Paper | 257 pages 
19 x 25.5 cm (7.5 x 10 in.) 
Publication Date: 2011

English, French and Italian

Ann-Helén Laestadius

It is winter, north of the Arctic Circle. A few hours of pale light is all the sun has to offer before the landscape is once more enveloped in complete darkness. This is Sápmi, land of the Sámi, Scandinavia’s Indigenous people.

Nine-year-old Elsa is the daughter of Sámi reindeer herders. Her community is under constant threat—from the Swedish population who don’t always value the Sámi way of life, from the government that wants to claim their land for mining, and from violent poachers who slaughter their reindeer for sport and for sale on the black market.

One morning, when Elsa goes skiing alone, she witnesses a man brutally killing her beloved reindeer calf. Elsa is terrified by what she sees. Fearing for her own life and for the lives of her family members, she remains silent.

Ten years pass, and Elsa is now trying to claim a role for herself in her community, where male elders expect young women to know their place. Meanwhile, the hostility toward the Sámi continues to escalate, and the police won’t do anything to protect them. When Elsa becomes the target of the man who killed her reindeer calf all those years ago, something inside of her breaks. The guilt, fear, and anger she’s been carrying since childhood come crashing over her, leading to a final catastrophic confrontation.

Told in three parts, Stöld is a powerful, propulsive, and cinematic novel about a courageous young Sámi woman struggling to defend her Indigenous heritage against the cruelty of the modern world for justice and for the future of her people.

Softcover | 436 pages
15.5 x 23.5 cm (6.1 x 9.2 in.) 
Publication Date: 2023

Robin Laurence, Mary Reid & Josée Drouin-Brisebois

For over three decades, Wanda Koop has created an overwhelming body of work. Published in conjunction with the exhibition Wanda Koop, sur le fil de l'expérience, organized by the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Canada, this beautifully illustrated catalogue presents a selection of paintings, as well as a number of video works. 

Paper | 164 pages
27 x 23 cm (10.6 x 9.1 in.) 
Publication Date: 2011

Sherri Sinobu Kajiwara, Steven McNeil, Jonathan Shaughnessy, Kiriko Watanabe 

Takao Tanabe celebrates the remarkable 70-year career of Takao Tanabe. Beginning with his training as an artist in Winnipeg and his subsequent development as a Modernist in New York, this career-spanning book takes readers through his period as an abstract artist on the Canadian Prairies in the 1970s and his eventual embrace of landscape painting upon his return to the West Coast in the early 1980s. This last turn is exemplified by his famous series of “Inside Passage” paintings: light-bathed depictions of the Georgia Straight that evoke its changing landscape and weather.

Takao Tanabe showcases the artist’s innovation and evolution over the course of his prolific career. This gorgeous volume invites readers to engage with fresh perspectives on Tanabe’s legacy, to reflect on his enduring impact on the development of Canadian art, and to celebrate his remarkable centenary.

Takao Tanabe, born in 1926 in Seal Cove, part of Prince Rupert in British Columbia, is a second-generation Japanese Canadian artist who has built a distinguished career as one of Canada’s most prolific and influential painters. Renowned for his abstract and representational landscapes, Tanabe’s work distills the essence of place through a masterful command of form and colour, combined with his keen observational eye and impeccable brush strokes. He transforms familiar Canadian terrains and coastal sceneries into extraordinary, luminous compositions that convey both serenity and energy.

Tanabe’s influence extends far beyond his technical skill, leaving a permanent mark on the development of Canadian art. His practice reflects a unique fusion of artistic sensibilities, merging Western and Eastern art traditions with the modernist movements of postwar Canada. His contributions to the artistic movement in Canada have earned him numerous honours, including the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts and the Order of Canada. Tanabe’s enduring legacy speaks to his ability to transcend the visual landscape and inspire his art viewers. 

Hardcover | 280 pages 
28.5 x 26 x 3 cm (11.2 x 10.2 x 1.2 in.) 
Publication Date: 2026