Voice of Fire

Obituaries for Shirley Thomson, the former director of the National Gallery of Canada, inevitably make much of her role in buying and defending Voice of Fire, the controversial acquisition that marked her most public moment as one of the most influential figures on Canada’s fine arts scene. (Here’s one from the Ottawa Citizen.)

Our Ottawa bureau chief is a renaissance man, is what he is. One day he came into the office and showed us the publisher’s cover design for his novel. What, Geddes was writing a novel? News to us. And then it turned out to be a really good novel, which is not the way most novels turn out.

Twenty years ago a painting by Barnett Newman ignited a firestorm in Canada