Barbara Astman

Barbara Astman (b. 1950) is an acclaimed Canadian artist and recipient of the Governor General’s Award for her contributions to contemporary lens-based art. A graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology, Astman’s work is rooted in photography, yet transcends it through an inventive approach to storytelling and concept. Astman is an esteemed educator, since the mid 1970s she has been a professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto. She is represented in important public, corporate and private collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Deutche Bank, New York; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Her works continue to inspire, engaging viewers with themes of memory, identity, and the personal as political.