Legends in Life and Art

Presented in cooperation with the National Archives of Canada and the Roloff Beny Foundation, this luminous exhibition of black-and-white photographs spanned the whole of Roloff Beny’s portraits of influential artists, writers, and performers, and served as documentation of the 20th century avant-garde tradition and community.

Born Wilfred Roy Beny in the Alberta city of Medicine Hat, Roloff Beny began his artistic life as a highly regarded abstract painter and printmaker, but soon discovered a passion for photography that took him into new artistic spheres and around the world, where he chronicled the life, art, and natural vistas of regions both remote and majestic. His efforts to capture and define the dramatic landscapes, cultures, and physiognomies of Northern Europe, Asia, North Africa, and the Levant—particularly the Greco-Roman edifices of the Mediterranean littoral—earned him the nickname “the Marco Polo from Medicine Hat.”

Among Beny’s most fascinating photo essays are his hundreds of unique portrait sittings—many of them commissioned by upscale magazines—of the leading lights of his day (1950s–1980s) in the worlds of music, dance, literature, cinema, and fashion. This exhibition of some of his finest (and most intimate) portraits was arranged in cooperation with the National Archives of Canada and the Roloff Beny Foundation.