Lynda Jessup is a historian of visual culture. Her practice is interdisciplinary, and she has written extensively on Canadian and Indigenous North American visual culture in exhibitions, the history of museums and collecting, and art historiography. She studies visual culture in exhibitions as an extension of historical relationships fostered by the Western system of meaning and valuation within which the dominant, subordinate and marginalized in so-called “Canadian art” have been defined as such. This approach has led to an ongoing interrogation of “the national” as another category of valuation, and to her most recent research on its international dimensions. This work has taken shape, as many projects do, in ways that differ from its conceptualization; beginning as a study of Group of Seven exhibitions as sites of official nationalism, it could now be described more accurately as a study of Canadian art exhibitions – specifically, state-sponsored exhibitions of Canadian art – and their role in managing the field’s historiography (otherwise referred to by the National Gallery of Canada as “the story of Canadian art”) in the face of competing narratives and opposing positions.
Most recently, Lynda’s research focus has expanded to the field of cultural diplomacy, with special consideration to the role of art exhibitions in advancing Canadian foreign policy and international relations. As Director of the , she leads an international team in the process of building a vibrant research network that brings academics and practitioners in the cultural sector into conversation with practitioners and scholars of diplomacy. With the support of a recent SSHRC Partnership Development Grant (2019-2025), she led a series research summits focused on . The summits produced three reports: e (2021); (2023); and Policies as Discourse (2025).
Lynda is Vice Dean in the Faculty of Arts & Science (2021-), where she oversees Faculty Relations across the faculty’s 30 departments and interdisciplinary programs. Previously, she was Associate Dean, Faculty of Arts & Science (2014-2021) and Director of Cultural Studies, ϳԹԴ’s interdisciplinary graduate program (2009-2014).
Current Research
Works in Progress:
“The Group of Seven in the USSR: Cold War Cultural Diplomacy and the Art of Prestige,” co-authored with Jeffrey Brison (forthcoming).
Winners’ History: The Group of Seven, the National Gallery and Canada’s Global Affairs, co-authored with Jeffrey Brison (under revision).
This book-length study explores the history of Canada’s national art narrative in conversation with other art histories in circulation internationally over the course of the twentieth century. Focusing on representative exhibitions—by definition, state-sponsored shows—this book examines the role of national art histories in advancing hegemonic values, dominant narratives and “winners’ histories.” It grows out of recent research and a growing body of literature devoted to museum representation and the role exhibitions play in reproducing cultural authority, whether of the artist, the state, the citizens it defines as such, or the museum itself. Providing detailed discussion over fourteen chapters, it deals with government-sponsored international exhibitions of Canadian art to probe the relationship between the extended state sphere of culture and the policy sphere of the state, which historically has been more explicitly directed to the advancement of liberalism and its economics.
Recent Articles, Chapters, Reports
“Canada: Art d’aujourd’hui: The Art of Diplomacy in the Wake of ‘Vive le Québec libre.’” Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'études canadiennes 2025: Volume 59, Issue 2 (189-221).
"The Art of Diplomacy," co-authored with Jeffrey Brison and Sarah E.K. Smith, in Understanding Cultural Diplomacy: Inside International Cultural Relations, pp. 56-71. Eds. Nicholas J. Cull, Stuart MacDonald and Jonathan Vickery (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishers, 2025).
Decolonial Practices in International Cultural Relations: Building Trust. Author, with Anita Budziszewska, Meike Lettau, Sarah E.K. Smith, César Villanueva and Eduardo L. Tadeo, Policy Brief based on the 2024-25 International Cultural Relations Research Alliance online conference. Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen in partnership with British Council, 2025.
“Towards a Critical Diplomacy,” co-authored with Jeffrey Brison, Diplomatica 6:1 (Spring 2024), 100-126.
“Cold War ‘Cultural Safaris’: Canadian Art, Cultural Diplomacy and the Asian Commonwealth Tour,” co-authored with Jeffrey Brison, Journal of Canadian Studies 58:1 (May 2024), 159-193.
“Unsettling Settler Diplomacy: International Cultural Relations in a Decolonizing World,” ICRRA Conference 2024: Decolonizing Practices in International Cultural Relations, Conference Proceedings (Berlin: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, 2024), 3-27, co-authored with Sarah Smith.
. Author, with Jeffrey Brison, Sascha Priewe and Sarah E.K. Smith. Recommendations submitted to the Ministry of Culture, Government of Mexico, Mondiacult2022.
. Co-editor, with Jeffrey Brison (North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative, 2021, open access publication, available in English-, Spanish- and French-language editions).
y. Co-author with Sascha Priewe (North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative, 2021, open access publication).
, Technical report prepared for the Copyright and International Trade Branch of the Department of Canadian Heritage, co-authored with Jeffrey Brison and Ben Schnitzer (2018).
Other Research Contributions
Books
Negotiations in Vacant Lot: Studying the Visual in Canada, co-edited with Erin Morton and Kirsty Robertson (McGill-ϳԹԴ Press, 2014).
Around and ϳԹԴ Marius Barbeau: Modelling Twentieth-Century Culture, co-edited with Andrew Nurse and Gordon Smith (Gatineau: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2008).
On Aboriginal Representation in the Gallery, editor, with Shannon Bagg (Hull: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2002).
Antimodernism and Artistic Experience: Policing the Boundaries of Modernity, editor (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001).
Scholarly Edition
Nass River Indians (Reconstruction), 35 mm reconstruction of the lost 1928 film, in collaboration with Library and Archives Canada, 23 min. Concept, research and sequencing by Lynda Jessup; intertitle scans and digital reconstruction by Dale Gervais, 2001. A 35 mm copy is in the collections of Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa.
Special Issue
Curating Cultural Diplomacy, co-edited with Sarah E.K. Smith, special issue, Journal of Curatorial Studies 5, no. 3 (2016).
Articles and Chapters
“Introduction: Rethinking Relevance: Studying the Visual in Canada,” co-authored with Erin Morton and Kirsty Robertson, in Negotiations in Vacant Lot: Studying the Visual in Canada, co-edited with Erin Morton and Kirsty Robertson (McGill-ϳԹԴ Press, 2014), 1–19.
“Looking at Landscape in the Age of Environmentalism,” in Expanding Horizons: Painting and Photography of American and Canadian Landscape, 1860–1918, ed. Hilliard Goldfarb (Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2009), 93–95, 85, 115.
“Marius Barbeau and Early Ethnographic Cinema,” in Around and ϳԹԴ Marius Barbeau: Writings on the Politics of Twentieth-Century Canadian Culture, co-edited with Andrew Nurse and Gordon Smith (Gatineau: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2008), 269–304.
“Introduction: Around and ϳԹԴ Marius Barbeau: Writings on Twentieth-Century Canadian Culture,” co-authored with Andrew Nurse and Gordon Smith, in Around and ϳԹԴ Marius Barbeau: Writings on Twentieth-Century Canadian Culture, ed. Lynda Jessup, Andrew Nurse and Gordon Smith (Gatineau: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2008), 1–12.
“Landscapes of Sport, Landscapes of Exclusion: The “Sportsman’s Paradise” in Late Nineteenth Century Canadian Painting,” Journal of Canadian Studies 40.1 (Winter 2005–06): 71–124.
“The Group of Seven and the Tourist Landscape in Western Canada, or The More Things Change...” Journal of Canadian Studies 37.1 (Spring 2002): 144–79.
“Moving Pictures and Costume Songs at the 1927 ‘Exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art, Native and Modern,’” Canadian Journal of Film Studies 11.1 (Spring 2002): 2–39.
“Hard Inclusion,” in On Aboriginal Representation in the Gallery (Hull: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2002), xi–xxviii.
“James Sibley Watson’s Nass River Indians,” in Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1893–1941, ed. Bruce Posner (New York: Black Thistle Press/Anthology Film Archives, 2001), 116–20.
“Antimodernism and Artistic Experience: An Introduction,” in Antimodernism and Artistic Experience: Policing the Boundaries of Modernity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 3–9.
“Bushwhackers in the Gallery: Antimodernism and the Group of Seven,” in Antimodernism and Artistic Experience: Policing the Boundaries of Modernity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 130–52.
“Tin Cans and Machinery: Saving the Sagas and Other Stuff,” Visual Anthropology, 12 (1999): 49–86.
“Prospectors, Bushwhackers, Painters: Antimodernism and the Group of Seven,” International Journal of Canadian Studies 17 (Spring 1998): 193–214.
“Some Readings are More Equal than Others,” Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies 3 (1997): 179–210.
“Art for a Nation?” Fuse (Summer 1996): 11–14.
Reprints
“The Group of Seven and the Tourist Landscape in Western Canada, or the More Things Change…” in Interpreting Canada’s Past: A Post-Confederation Reader, ed. J.M. Bumstead, Len Kuffert and Michael Ducharme (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2012).
“Art for a Nation?” Fuse Magazine 19. 4 (Summer 1996): 11–14, reprinted in John O’Brian and Peter White, Beyond Wilderness: The Group of Seven, Canadian Identity, and Contemporary Art (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-ϳԹԴ Press, 2007), 186–92.
“The Group of Seven and the Tourist Landscape in Western Canada, or The More Things Change,” Journal of Canadian Studies 37.1 (2002), reprinted in People, Places, and Times: Readings in Canadian Social History, vol. 2: Post-Confederation, ed., Cynthia R. Comacchio and Elizabeth Jane Errington (Toronto: Thomson-Nelson, 2006), pp. 462–82.
“Tin Cans and Machinery: Saving the Sagas and Other Stuff,” Visual Anthropology, 12 (1999): 49–86. Reprinted in www.canadianfilm.ca, 2000, pp. 1–51.
Awards and Recognition
Awards
• Universities Art Association of Canada (UAAC) Recognition Award, 2018
• Fulbright Scholar, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York, 2010–11
• Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Supervision, School of Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs, ϳԹԴ, 2009
• ϳԹԴ Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching, 1998
Research Fellowships and Residencies
• Visiting Scholar in Residence, Massey College, University of Toronto, 2019-20
• Visiting Scholar, International Arts Management and Cultural Policy Program, Universidad Panamericana, Mexico City, 2019
• Fulbright Scholar, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York, 2010–11
• National Gallery of Canada Research Fellowship in Canadian Historical Art, National Gallery of Canada, 2002-03
• Canadian Centre for the Visual Arts Research Fellowship in Historical Canadian Art, National Gallery of Canada, 1994-95
Research Grants
• Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Partnership Development Grant, PI, “The Cultural Relations Approach to Diplomacy,” 2019-25
• MITACS Accelerate Program, PI, “Toronto’s City Diplomacy: Arts, Culture, and Heritage,” in partnership with Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival (Hot Docs), 2019-20
• Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Institutional Grant (SIG) “Blockbuster: The Role of Masterpieces and Treasures in International Cultural Relations,” 2017-18
• Copyright and International Trade Branch of the Department of Canadian Heritage, research grant for Cultural Diplomacy and Trade: Making Connections, 2017-18
• Canada Program, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, “The Object/s of Cultural Diplomacy: Negotiating Diversity and Inclusion in the Global Era,” inaugural keynote conversation, North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative, 2016-17
• Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Aid to Scholarly Publishing, Negotiations in a Vacant Lot: Studying the Visual in Canada, 2013-14
• Senate Advisory Research Committee, “Art Exhibitions and Canada–US Foreign Policy, 1936–74,” 2012-13
• Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Aid to Research Workshops, “Negotiations in a Vacant Lot,” 2009-11
• Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant, “Winners’ History: Exhibiting the Group of Seven,” 2005-08
• The Canada Council for the Arts, Initiatives in Contemporary Visual Art and Architecture, “A Working Discussion on Aboriginal Representation in the Art Gallery,” 1999-00
• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Aid to Occasional Conferences, “A Working Discussion on Aboriginal Representation in the Art Gallery,” 1999-00
• ϳԹԴ-Art Gallery of Ontario Doctoral Directed Research Program, “A Working Discussion on Aboriginal Representation in the Art Gallery,” 1999-00
• Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant, “Film, Ethnography, and the Conceptualization of ‘Modern,’ ‘Native,’ and ‘Folk’ Art in Canada,” 1996-00
• Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Aid to Occasional Research Conferences, “Policing the Boundaries of Modernity/Antimodernism and Artistic Experience,” 1996-97
• Art Gallery of Ontario, ϳԹԴ, University of Toronto, “Policing the Boundaries of Modernity/Antimodernism and Artistic Experience,” 1996-97
Arts & Science
