Winner, APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award and The Critical Eye Award
Honourable Mention, Canadian Museums Association’s Outstanding Achievement in Research

In Future Possible, Mireille Eagan and other writers and artists navigate the tangled histories and cultures of Newfoundland and Labrador to investigate the visual output and to write the narrative that it has created. The result is an ambitious volume, arising from a two-part exhibition of the same name at The Rooms, that provides a multi-vocal, multi-faceted history spanning pre- and post-Confederation Newfoundland.

Lavishly illustrated with reproductions of original works and installation views, Future Possible features essays by curators and artists on topics such as pre-Confederation art; contemporary art, craft, and Indigenous culture; and outsider and folk art. This intriguing volume places artifacts from the province’s history and work by iconic Newfoundland and Labrador artists such as Gerald Squires and Mary Pratt in conversation with works by contemporary artists like Jordan Bennett and Kym Greeley. Together they explore how history is told and retold through objects and images and how these objects and images, and the power structures that preserve them, define an understanding of place.

Contributions from Mireille Eagan, Jamie Fitzpatrick, Andy Jones, Heather Igloliorte, Jeff Webb, Darryn Doull, Bushra Junaid, Cory Thorne, Kelley Totten, Patricia Grattan, Gerard Curtis, Caroline Stone, Craig Francis Power, Christopher Pratt, Logan MacDonald, Lisa Moore, Eva Crocker, Andria Hickey, and a foreword by Anne Chafe.

Mireille Eagan is Curator of Canadian Art at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, St. John's, a position she has held since January 2010. Prior to this, she was Curator at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Eagan has lectured nationally on Canadian art and has published several catalogues and essays on Canadian artists. She has a special interest in promoting the activities of artists based in the Atlantic provinces.

Mireille Eagan's profile page

• Winner, APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award
• Winner, The Critical Eye Award
• Commended, Canadian Museums Association’s Outstanding Achievement in Research

“Future Possible is a hefty and calibrated trove of celebrated, obscure, popular, rare, iconographic and across-the-board-astonishing visual art.”

<i>The Chronicle Herald</i>

“This is a valuable history told through objects and images — a history that challenges many conventional assumptions about what constitutes art.”

<i>Literary Review of Canada</i>

“Future Possible: An Art History of Newfoundland and Labrador, a handsome and expansive book, dodges any attempt at a defining narrative though the expedient of inviting numerous tellers to recount their views on the histories of art in Newfoundland and Labrador.”

<i>Border Crossings</i>

“Scenes of Newfoundland and Labrador that will never cease to amaze you. The volume includes an incredible variety in art, time period, and styles; from legendary artists such as Gerald Squires to more contemporary ones like Kim Greeley.”

<i>[EDIT]ION</i>

“Calling it a challenge does not aptly describe the monumental undertaking of this first step towards holistically presenting a narrative of art history for a landscape so physically vast and diverse in its communities.”

<i>Billie Magazine</i>