Fonds F0585 - Jeanne Randolph fonds

Jeanne Lillian Randolph (1943- ), art theorist, writer and psychiatrist, was born in Morgantown, West Virginia, and grew up in Orange, Texas. She was educated at the Agnes College for Women in Decatur, Georgia (1961-1962) and attained a Bachelor of Arts in English language and literature from the University of Chicago in 1965. Randolph attended medical school at Columbia University in New York City (1966-1968) and at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (1968-1970). An opponent of the Vietnam War, Randolph became a Canadian permanent resident in September 1970 and resumed her medical studies at University of Toronto, graduating in 1974. As a resident in psychiatry between 1975 and 1980, Randolph worked at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, Sunnybrook Hospital and Toronto General Hospital. After completion of her residency in 1980, Randolph was an associate staff psychiatrist in the Department of Psychiatry at Toronto General Hospital and lectured at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

By the late 1970s, Randolph had begun writing about art using her background in psychoanalytic theory to develop what she termed "ficto-criticism". Her writing includes texts for many art exhibition catalogues and articles published in Canadian art periodicals such as "Vanguard", "Parachute", "Artforum", and "C magazine". Randolph's first book, "Psychoanalysis & synchronized swimming" was published in 1991, followed by "Symbolism and its discontents" (1997), "Why stoics box: essays on art and society" (2003), "Ethics of luxury: materialism and imagination" (2007), and "The critical object" (2010). Her writing has also appeared as chapters in numerous anthologies and other publications. Since the 1990s, Randolph has lectured/performed across Canada and appeared in multimedia art projects.

In addition to lecturing in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, Randolph also taught art theory courses at the Ontario College of Art and Design (1993-1996) and at the University of Manitoba (2004-2005). She served on the curatorial advisory committee of the Power Plant Gallery at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre (1986-1990), on the board of directors for the Beaver Hall Artists' Cooperative (1990-1995), and was a board member of Toronto Arts for Youth (1998-2002).