Fern Bayer [biography]
Fern Bayer is an independent curator, consultant, and art historian based in Toronto. A native
of Montreal, she is a g raduate of McGill University (B.A.) and studied conservation and museum
science in Italy before receiving her M.A. from the University of Toronto.
As Chief Curator, Government of Ontario Art Collection (1977-1995), Bayer single-handedly resurrected
the "lost" art collection that had been amassed by successive Ontario governments since the 1850s. Her
exhaustive research was published in 1984 in The Ontario Collection, for which she was
awarded the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal (2002).
In her capacity as International Cultural Consultant for the Ontario government (1987-1995), Bayer
effected nineteen large international curatorial projects, mainly in Japan, featuring the work of Alan
Belcher, Geneviève Cadieux, CCMC, Fastwürms, General Idea, Michael Snow, and others.
Her exhibition The Strange Objects of David Cronenberg's Desire, organized in tandem
with the Toronto International Film Festival, toured to Tokyo and Osaka, the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto,
and Thessalonika, Greece (1993). It was later updated for São Paulo, Brazil as The Cronenberg Condition: Everything is Permitted (2001).
With co-curator Jamelie Hassan, she presented the first showing of contemporary Canadian art in the
Middle East, at the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman (1992).
After leaving the Ontario government, Bayer began the lengthy project of writing the catalogue raisonné of
the work of General Idea (1967-1995), which she is currently completing. She was guest-curator
for the Art Gallery of Ontario exhibition, The Search for the Spirit: General Idea 1968-1975 (1997/98),
for which The Ontario Association of Art Galleries awarded her catalogue essays the "Best Historical
Research and Writing Award" (1998). She worked in Rome, Italy (1998-2000) then returned to
Toronto to catalogued General Idea's editions for the catalogue raisonné General Idea Editions: 1967-1995,
edited by Barbara Fischer, that accompanies the international touring exhibition of the same name (2003-2007). Fischer
and Bayer received the "2004 Melva J. Dwyer Award for Excellence in Canadian Art Publishing" from
the Art Reference Libraries Society of North America for the publication.
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