Dennis Young

Dennis Young (October 1, 1928 2021) was a curator of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto who afterwards established the art history program at the Nova Scotia College of Art (NSCAD), Halifax.

Career Young was born in Upwell near Wisbech, in England. In 1946, he joined the Air Training Corps and got a glider pilot's A license, then joined the RAF to become a wireless transmitter mechanic. In 1959, he studied at the London University Institute of Education and worked in several schools. and was reviewed favorably by Lucy Lippard in ArtsCanada. He then did a retrospective of Jack Chambers (1970). In 1970 Young was approached by Curtis Coley, Director of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, to select the works and write the catalogue introduction for an exhibition of contemporary Canadian painting and sculpture, 49th parallels: new Canadian art. It was the first traveling exhibition of Canadian art to appear in the United States for 26 years, the curator wrote.

The show was followed by what turned out to be Young’s swan song at the Art Gallery of Ontario, an exhibition titled Recent vanguard acquisitions (1971), of his Canadian and International purchases during his years there, mostly sculpture with a predominance of American artists such as Donald Judd and among painters, Chuck Close (Young bought his colossal portrait of "Kent"). The exhibition was reviewed favorably again, this time in the Toronto Star.

In 1972, Young met Gerald Ferguson, who visited him at the Art Gallery of Ontario to show him prints from the NSCAD Lithography Workshop. A year later, Young was invited to create the Art History Department at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. When the college created the NSCAD Press, Young chaired the publications committee and oversaw the design and translation of its first book, Paul-Émile Borduas: Écrits/Writings 1942-1958 (1978).

Young retired in 1990 after serving as Chair of the Art History Department (also called the Department of Historical and Critical Studies) for 18 years. He was then made Professor Emeritus. The Board of Governors appointed Young as a Life Fellow of NSCAD University in 2017. He also wrote Marcel Duchamp, the catalogue for the exhibition Marcel Duchamp: dustballs & readymades, etc. (1997), a National Gallery of Canada travelling exhibitions program. At the start of his "ninth decade", to keep his mind alert, he created his own website at http://www.dennis-young.ca, "Dennis Young: Writings on art" which wittily and persuasively discussed his projects and various writings, book reviews, selected essays and lectures. He was 93 when he died in Halifax, Nova Scotia.