Event Details
Date
July 24, 2025
Time
6:00pm – 7:30pm ET
Location
Join Sarah E.K. Smith for the launch of her new book, Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America, which explores how the art world navigated North American free trade.
This event will be hybrid: you can join onsite at Museum London (421 Ridout St N, London, ON) or online via Zoom Webinar! Your registration is good for either an online or onsite ticket.
The 1989 Canada–US Free Trade Agreement and 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement reinvented the concept of North America as a cohesive whole, united by free trade. But within the bold concept of continental unity lay a paradox. While art was mobilized to frame the new narrative, culture itself was explicitly excluded from the agreements that implemented this vision.
Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America (UBC Press, 2025) brings culture to the foreground by examining how artworks, exhibitions, and museum programs from the 1980s to 2010 mediated North American free trade, from government-supported cultural diplomacy initiatives to activist art that confronted impending US hegemony.
Sarah E.K. Smith reveals how Canadian artists engaged with, contested, and reflected on free trade, paying particular attention to the ways in which art was used to forge ties between Canada and Mexico and to circulate ideas about North American identity. Her nuanced analysis convincingly makes the case for the centrality of art in conceptualizing continental unity.
