1 A Winnipeg History: The Art of Marie Guest, 1880-1966 was produced when two art history professors at the University of Winnipeg offered an ambitious and experimental course designed to give third-year university students an opportunity to conduct primary research and to assist in mounting an exhibit. The subject was Marie Guest, a Manitoba artist whose work was highly acclaimed from the 1920s to 1940s, but who was never accorded serious recognition in the annals of Manitoban or Canadian art history.

2 The impetus for the exhibit arose by chance while Professor Majzels was house-hunting. She walked into a home, and as she recalls, "encountered somebody whose presence was displayed on the walls." It was mostly the historian in Majzels who was impressed with the more than 60 paintings in the home of Mrs. Hessie Guest, daughter-in-law of the artist. Majzels recognized the tremendous research potential of such an extensive collection. In addition to the framed paintings, there were dozens of unframed works and sketchbooks, as well as metalwork and jewellery by the artist, and Guest's scrapbooks and photographs. As it turned out there was also excellent potential for research with family members and friends who had known the artist and who were living in Winnipeg.

3 As Majzels talked with her colleagues in the history department at the University of Winnipeg about her excitement in pursuing research on Marie Guest, the idea for an experimental history course evolved. She and Professor McKinnon decided that the course should include primary research on the artist, which would then be presented in an exhibit based on archival evidence. With access to such a remarkable collection of material history and people who had known the artist, there was an ideal situation for an enriching learning experience for history students. The project also created the opportunity to conduct and present to the community a previously unwritten chapter of Manitoba's social history.

4 The 12 students who joined the experimental course set out to discover all they could about Guest. They conducted their research by obtaining documentary evidence from institutions throughout Canada, through oral history interviews and by searching through archival newspaper and textual record collections. The class compiled an impressive body of data on the artist from primary sources and then participated in mounting a representative exhibit of the artist's Winnipeg work.

5 The exhibit brought together an interesting collection of paintings by Marie Guest. The 40 hanging works spanned the late 1920s to the early 1950s. As suggested by the exhibit title, the works were chosen in part for the story they told of life in Winnipeg during this period: the North End open-air markets; familiar cityscapes; leisure scenes at the lake; life in rural areas close to Winnipeg; Manitoba forests; and typical vacation spots along the warm southern U.S. coastlines. The exhibit revealed the range of the artist's themes, taking a social history approach which was developed through the choice of exhibit works, catalogue content, the inclusion of memorabilia and the exhibit tours and presentations.

6 There was a major component of the exhibit that revealed something of Marie Guest's personal character and strengthened the social history approach of the exhibit. A large photo of the artist as a young woman, shown working in her studio on a copper piece, filled one entire wall of the gallery (Fig. 1). The photograph gave a strong sense of the dedication of this solitary young woman at the beginning of her career and seemed to invite the viewer to consider Guest's life as an artist. Central to the exhibit was a large case that exposed some of the more personal work by the artist and glimpses of her personal life. It contained jewellery designed and crafted by Guest, a copper box with a bullet handle, as well as sketchbooks, photographs and poetry created and used by the artist as reference material for her paintings. The case also included personal mementoes kept by the artist, such as her wedding and family photographs and a scrapbook (Fig. 2).

7 It is difficult to evaluate the success of the Marie Guest exhibit separately from that of the course, since the objectives for both were so closely intertwined. The professors were concerned with the pedagogical benefits that might be gained by the students through conducting original research, considering how historical interpretation and memory function, and concretely applying art history research. They were also aware of and motivated by the opportunity of bringing a talented and forgotten female painter to public attention.

8 There are certain difficulties inherent in attempting to interpret any subject as a group project. The interpretations of Marie Guest's life and work that I encountered in talking with the professors and students (and reading their reports) were as varied as the numbers of interpreters involved. I think that this range of perspective led to an exhibit without a strong singular analysis of the artist. Since the research was carried out by many individuals, neither professors nor students had an overview of all the material complete enough to probe the artist's character and paintings at a deeper level. However, this was an unavoidable situation as the evidence-gathering was designed as a group project and was further constrained by the time limitations — the exhibit opened only six months into the research process.

9 Another weakness of the exhibit was that while it showed a great deal of the artist's work produced in Winnipeg after her marriage, it showed only two paintings from Nova Scotia, where Guest lived for most of her first 39 years. The social pressures that the artist experienced once she moved into married life in Winnipeg were considerable. She ceased all painting for six years during which time she lived with her in-laws, gave birth to her two children and expressed disillusionment, if not depression, with painting her new environment. The exhibit did not address the artist's life in Nova Scotia in more than a cursory manner. It would have been interesting to have had some of her earlier works available for comparison. They may have revealed something about her very different lifestyle as an unmarried female artist and possibly her different approach to her work prior to marriage and move to Winnipeg. There is still a need to research the artist's birth family and early training, her artistic development and the influences that led to Guest's choice to marry when it meant leaving behind her support network. This research would address some of the questions that remain.

10 There may never be another exhibit ol Guest's work in Winnipeg. Marie Guest was never interested in commercial success. She priced her works so highly that few of her paintings sold. Only one work is currently held in a public institution in Manitoba, The Dufferin Street Market (Fig. 4). The extensive family collection of Marie Guest's paintings, scrapbook, photographs and other personal belongings are now being dispersed to various family members. One would hope that some of the works by this interesting figure in Winnipeg's history will make their way into Manitoba's public collections.

11 While the exhibit, the catalogue and the related interpretive programs presented a great deal of information about the artist and the community in which she lived, they raised more questions than they answered. This does not diminish the value of the exhibit, but rather highlights the difficulty of obtaining swift results from primary sources: the Winnipeg research proved most fruitful, but the correspondence sent to institutions throughout North America was not as productive, despite the enthusiastic support from many of those contacted.

12 The exhibit did succeed in presenting a large number of works by Marie Guest to the Winnipeg audience. The students in the course expressed the difficulty of the group research and exhibit development process, but unanimously agreed that they would have missed the learning experience. Marie Guest's work was revisited and her contribution to Winnipeg's social and art history has come partially into public consciousness, at least in Winnipeg. One would hope that the work begun by Majzels, McKinnon and the students may encourage a similar course or research project in Nova Scotia, where Marie Guest spent the first half of her life. The life of this forgotten artist can reveal valuable insights into the lives of many women artists who, like Guest, led productive lives as artists, though their stories remain untold and their works unseen.