San Francisco artist Clay Spohn (1898--1977), one of the best artists of the modern era, originated art movements of the twentieth century and painted with great beauty. Using Spohn's Notebooks, David Beasley has traced his thought and career. This book is amply illustrated with Spohn's drawings and paintings placed to elucidate the text. Many paintings are in color as Spohn used color superbly. "I consider David Beasley's monograph on the work of Clay Spohn one of the most moving documents I have read on an artist, revealing a compassion and sense of justice rarely encountered in the field of aesthetics," - John Hultberg, artist. " Although little has been written about him, Spohn was among the most influential artists of his generation," - Susan Landauer, Art Historian.

Canadian born, MacAgy was international in his influence. From a privileged student at the Barnes Foundation through innovative years at the San Francisco Museum of Art, as Director at the California School of Fine Arts from 1945-50, when he was the catalyst for the advent of American abstraction, as curator at MOMA, as the spirit behind the modern art movement in Dallas, as the introducer and interpreter of European and Russian art to America, as the head of the National Endowment for the Arts, and as the installer of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, MacAgy taught the public and helped to shape our culture. MacAgy changed museums from mausoleums to happenings. He was on the cutting edge of modern art movements from American abstract expressionism to conceptualism and fought as an independent educator against the forces using art for political ends. His friends were the great artists of his day, including those as diverse as Clyfford Still and Marcel Duchamp. Only his first wife Jermayne rivaled him as an installer of art. "Douglas MacAgy will be remembered as someone bigger than the institution he so often invigorated. For he was one of those whose sensibilities were more for the artist than for the director."-R. Grove, 1973. "MacAgy has a place in history,"- George Rickey. "I consider him to be one of the great moving influences in art during the 20th century."- Elizabeth Blake, 1989. This book is awarded each year in San Francisco to the winner of the Douglas MacAgy Award for the greatest contribution to the arts.

"Charmingly written," EXPLORERS JOURNAL

Today when travel has become impersonal, we find in this book a personal account. Here are fresh and highly individualistic impressions of the Turkish people living in the wilderness of the Isfendyar Mountains on the coast of the Black Sea. Starting in complete ignorance and with no preconceptions David Beasley and through him the reader experience the warmth, generosity and touching enthusiasm of the Turks for contact with a foreigner. Through Paphlagonia With A Donkey is an awakening of a Westerner to an Eastern culture on the one hand, and an amusing, sometimes sympathetic appreciation of the independent personality of the donkey, Bobby, on the other.

Full Review

"Rankin's Roles" comprising every role Rankin played with play and theatre from 1860 to 1914 is available below.

Richard Beasley: the character of the man and his times; a talk to the Friends of the MacNab Circle at Dundurn Castle on February 19, 2002 (Simcoe: Davus Publishing, 2003) by David Beasley. Pamphlet of 24 pages contains 22 illustrations. Price $3.95 CDN

Richard Beasley (1761-1842), the first settler at the Head-of-the-Lake, now Hamilton, Ontario, in the 1770s, grew up in Albany, N.Y. The pre-revolutionary influences of the social and political events he experienced as a boy guided his work as fur-trader, magistrate, great landholder, politician, militia commander and reformer in Upper Canada as hehelped to form a civilization out of the wilderness. His stand against authoritarian government brought him trouble and eventually he lost his homestead on Burlington Heights to Allan MacNab who built his Dundurn Castle on the foundations of Beasley's home.

As a trader in furs, Richard partnered Richard Cartwright(his cousin with whom he had the famous Cartwright-Beasley correspondence) at Kingston, Robert Hamilton at Queenston, Tom Barry in Toronto and Peter Smith in Port Hope. He knew Chief Joseph Brant (who was 18 years his senior) growing up and had a close association with him and the Mohawks who frequented his tavern on Burlington Heights. Richard, as agent for Brant, brought Mennonite settlers to Block Two (Waterloo County) and encouraged settlement elsewhere on the behest of Lt.-Gov. Simcoe. Richard formed the militia, built grist and saw mills (re: the Ancaster Old Mill), and tried to reform the paranoid restrictions of the Family Compact against settlement. As speaker of the Assembly in 1804, he prevented Reverend Strachan's bill for establishing common schools under Anglicans, a step toward making Anglicanism the state religion, although he himself was Anglican, and earned the hatred of Strachan who worked secretly against him for years. Richard was the most prominent Canadian to support Robert Gourlay's reforms and consequently after 1820 suffered reprisals from Lt.-Gov. Maitland and the Strachan-inspired Family Compact - to which the talk refers, adding new details in footnotes.

By 1826, the British colonial office began siding with the political reformers in correcting the corrupt land practices, and Richard, in the Assembly, gained his magistracy back. As a moderate reformer he worked with those such as William Lyon Mackenzie who later became radicals to bring about change. Government land policies and the still influential Strachan working through his former students such as Allan MacNab and John Solomon Cartwright combined in 1832 to undermine him financially.

Richard had witnessed the horrors of the American Revolution, the fighting from Fort Niagara, the battles of the War of 1812, in which he was the Colonel of the 2nd York regiment, the swift development of wilderness into a metropolis and the eventual triumph of reform government - in all of which he played a major role. This talk touches upon all these aspects.

The MacNab Circle, formed in 1969, honours Sir Allan MacNab with a birthday dinner, Feb. 19, every year, accompanied by a lecture or dramatic presentation directly related to his life and times.

The pamphlet may be ordered from the Davus Publishing at its Simcoe or Buffalo address. The price is $3.95 Cdn with no GST . Please add postage of $1.25. Please make cheque payable to David Beasley.

It is available in the museum bookshops in and about Hamilton, Ontario, such as Dundurn Museum, Science and Technology Museum, Ireland House, Brant Museum in Burlington, Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum at Mount Hope, and the Hamilton Regional Arts Council Office in the Jackson Square Mall, Hamilton, Eva Brook Donly Museum, Simcoe..

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