May / June 2001 Vol. 33, no. 3

Culture of Fear

Cheryl Jaffee
Curator, Jacob M. Lowy Collection

Josephus. Amsterdam, 1732.

The National Library of Canada has lent four powerfully graphic books to the Ottawa Art Gallery’s exhibition Fear of Fears, which ran from February 3 to May 6, 2001.

Exhibition curator Jonathan Browns writes, "the culture of fear has been expressed across a range of genres, from literature and visual art to science". In his search for the great breadth of images on display, he has mined the Gallery’s Firestone Art Collection, of which he is curator. He has also borrowed from other collections, including those of the National Gallery of Canada and the National Archives of Canada in addition to those of the National Library of Canada.

Venice Haggadah. 1740

Artistic depictions of terror and loss crisscross cultures and history. Browns’s selection of Passover Haggadahs from the National Library is both astute and original. The first, printed in Venice in 1740,¹ depicts a scene of nature in chaos from the Ten Plagues. The second, a postwar edition from Munich, 1946,² portrays the life and death selection process in a Nazi concentration camp. A volume of Josephus (Amsterdam, 1732)³ was open to a minutely detailed copper engraving of the panic of the Flood. The skeletal Dance of Death is boldly depicted in Hartmann Schedel’s monumental Liber chronicarum (Nuremberg, 1493).⁴ The book was placed close by Arthur Lismer’s skeletal Danse macabre (1935). Lives are ravaged. The images endure.

Fear of Fears explored the many contexts and images associated with our utter loss of control over environment and destiny.

For more information about the Jacob M. Lowy Collection, contact

Cheryl Jaffee
Curator, Jacob M. Lowy Collection
Room 237A, 395 Wellington Street
Ottawa ON
K1A 0N4
Telephone: (613) 995-7960
Fax: (613) 943-1112

For more information about the Rare Book Collection, contact

Michel Brisebois
Curator, Rare Book Collection
Room 468, 395 Wellington Street
Ottawa ON
K1A 0N4
Telephone: (613) 947-0828
Fax: (613) 995-1969

¹ From the Jacob M. Lowy Collection.

² Ibid.

³ Ibid.

⁴ From the Rare Book Collection.