Toronto-based, born United States, 1950

An American who studied at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Barbara Astman came to Canada in 1970, during the Vietnam War. She has been exhibiting in public galleries and museums across Canada and abroad since 1975 at venues such as the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge, AB, George Eastman House in Rochester, NY, the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, France and Galleria Luca Polazzoli in Milan, Italy. Astman has produced numerous public commissions, the most recent of which was for the Canadian Embassy in Berlin, in 2005. Barbara Astman is also a dedicated art professor who has mentored numerous emerging artists at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, where she has been teaching since the mid 1970s.

A catalogue of her work, Barbara Astman: personal persona, a 20-year survey, documents her 1995 retrospective at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. She is also featured in The Maclean’s Companion to Canadian Arts and Culture, and Canadian Art in the Twentieth Century. Her work is found in important public collections including the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, France, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England.