‘Incentive to vision’: the Emma Lake Art Camp

Abstract

With the opening of its Murray Point Summer School of Art at Emma Lake in 1936, the University of Saskatchewan became the first Canadian university to establish an outdoor art school. Emma Lake is in northern Saskatchewan, and every attempt was made by the University to preserve the virgin forest in the area where the classes were held. Although primarily developed for the benefit of Saskatchewan residents, the workshops became nationally and internationally known, and acclaimed painters, sculptors and critics from across Canada, Europe and the United States made the trip north. For over twenty years students attending the school produced an annual scrapbook documenting their experience; the photographs and illustrations from those yearbooks provide both interesting social commentary and excellent documentation of a learning environment students considered ‘rich, deep and significant’.