Wednesday September 23, 7:30 p.m.
From Surrealist Photography to the Mylar Chamber: Clarence John Laughlin and Ira Cohen
A talk by Allan Graubard
Free Times Cafe, 320 College St.
Clarence John Laughlin (the celebrated New Orleans photographer) is the first of his generation in the 1940s to root his vision in Surrealism and surrealist techniques. Two decades later, Ira Cohen (post-Beat New York poet, photographer and publisher) broadens that vision in the Mylar Chamber experience. For Laughlin, the photograph transforms the relationships between him and the objects, subjects, and environments he photographs, revealing their unique inner life. For Cohen, the same takes place but in the Mylar Chamber where the photograph, now a reflection of a reflection, captures wild transformations. By the end of the 1960s, we have entered a realm where virtuality gains its first representations.
Allan Graubard will discuss this legacy with visual projections. A friend of and collaborator with Clarence John Laughin (1905-1985 ) and Ira Cohen (1935-2011 ), he is also one of their documentarians.
Allan Graubard is a poet, writer, playwright, literary critic and curator of art. Recent titles include Sun Step Black Lake (Broken Sleep Books, UK, 2024; La Page Blanche, in French translation, 2026), Language of Birds (Anon Editions, NYC/LA, 2020), Into the Mylar Chamber: Ira Cohen (Fulgur Press, UK, 2019) and more. He is editor of and contributor to the international art and literary journals: Nigredo (2022), Aerial Archipelago (2024), and Caliber (2026). Recent curations at the Eugenio F. Granell Foundation Museum, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, include Homage aux Nabis: The Pont-Aven Suiteby Gregg Simpson (2025), Calle Cervantes: The Art of Collage by David Coulter (2023), and Dragons: The Art of Eugenio F. Granell and Rik Lina (2022). He was also contributor to and consultant for the International Encyclopedia of Surrealism (Bloomsbury, UK, 2019). His plays have been performed in NYC, Washington, DC, Dubrovnik Croatia, and Sibiu, Romania, with publication.Allan lives in NYC and dedicates this event to his late wife Carolyn McGee, actor and master teacher of acting.
Wednesday September 30, 7:30 p.m.
Tradition vs transformation: Balancing historical collections and contemporary visions in the Government of Ontario Art Collection.
A talk by Lani Kopczinski
Arts & Letters Club, 14 Elm St.
The Government of Ontario Art Collection offers a unique lens on the evolution of art in Canada, from early European academic traditions to the diverse range of contemporary practices represented today. The Collection reflects key moments in the development of artistic expression in Canada, including the influence of the Group of Seven, the rise of mid-century abstraction through Painters Eleven, and more recent engagements with documentary practices, identity, place, and lived experience across a variety of media.
As the Collection continues to grow, its curators grapple with fundamental questions about its purpose and direction. How should a public collection balance historical strengths with changing artistic and social perspectives? How can it reflect the diversity of contemporary Ontario while preserving a coherent vision of the past? And what does it mean for a collection to remain truly contemporary in an era of rapid cultural change?
Lani Kopczinski is the Curator of the Government of Ontario Art Collection at the Archives of Ontario, a position she has held since 2011. Prior to that she was the Assistant Curator for two years and has worked with the collection in various capacities since 2004. She also worked at Ritchies Auction House in Toronto where she assisted with estimates for a range of Canadian art and decorative item consignments. She graduated from the University of Toronto with an Honours BA in Fine Art History and is the recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012), Vice Regal Commendation (2022), the King Charles III Coronation Medal (2024) and the Ontario Public Service Amethyst Award (2025) for public service and volunteering. In her role as Curator, Lani manages the Art Loan Program and develops all aspects of the collection including access, promotion, documentation and research for conservation and acquisition.
The Government of Ontario Art Collection was the first publicly funded art collection in Canada. Dating from the 1850s, it currently numbers over 2,800 original works of art. Many of these works can be found in Ontario’s Legislative Building in Toronto and in ministries and government offices throughout the city. A significant number are also located in government buildings in over 30 towns and cities across the province. Broad in scope and eclectic in nature, the collection is made up of historical and contemporary paintings, works on paper, indoor and outdoor sculpture, official portraits and antique furnishings and decorative objects.
Sunday October 18, 7:30 p.m.
Pursuing Narrative in Medicine
A talk by Dr. Sharon Baltman
Free Times Cafe, 320 College St.
In medical school in the sixties, we were taught to ask the patient for their Chief Complaint, and to clarify it with a series of concrete descriptors in 15 seconds or less. What was not attended to, was the patient’s back story. Only in 2006, Dr. Rita Charon, an internist at Columbia, wrote the first book on Narrative Medicine. In it she teaches that instead of asking the patient to describe the type of pain, its location and intensity, to simply pose the question: “What do I need to know about you?” And then to listen closely to their story, in the same way we would study a piece of art. Narrative Medicine is now on the curriculum of every medical school. Only in retrospect did I realize that the trajectory of my career pursued narrative in medicine.
Sharon Baltman is a retired physician psychotherapist, who began writing creatively in 1992. Her experiences in medicine are represented both in her memoir Escape from The Bedside (2013), and the novel Anne of Oasis (2021), which is informed by the tools she taught patients in the therapy room. She is the author of articles in the Globe and Mail, in literary anthologies, and on CBC Radio, and is a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada.
Thursday, October 29, 7:30 p.m.
The Future of Canadian Publishing
A discussion with Patrick Crean, Kenneth Whyte, and Martha Sharpe
Arts & Letters Club, 14 Elm St.
A much-needed, even urgent discussion: The statistics are dire: only a tiny percentage of books read by Canadians are by Canadian authors. The retail market is dominated by Amazon. There is no money to fund research for journalistic or historical non-fiction. Literary fiction has vanished from the bestseller lists. Independent publishers struggle to stay afloat. What is to be done?
This is a forum in which conventional wisdom and even sacred ideas will be challenged.
Three experts with many years of experience in editing, publishing and bookselling will explain the practical and political issues behind this crisis and suggest some concrete policies that might alleviate it. Patrick Crean, former literary editor for one of the major presses and creator of the Canada Book Initiative soon to be presented in the House of Commons, Kenneth Whyte, former newspaper editor, now publisher of the independent press Sutherland House and author of the Shush newsletter on the business of publishing, and Martha Sharpe, bookstore owner and independent publisher of Flying Books, will answer questions from writers Russell Smith and Beatriz Hausner.
