Ottawa, On Display / Ottawa, Mise en scène

This exhibition text explores Ottawa’s social landscape. Featuring both historic and contemporary images, documents, and artifacts dating from 1657 to the present, Ottawa on Display suggests how we are positioned as spectators, not only as moving bodies in the street, but as consumers of maps, prints, printed guides and pamphlets, tourist souvenirs, photographs and films. With a curatorial essay by Melissa Rombout, and interviews with Marion Dewar, Chantal Hébert, John Ramlochand and John Ralston Saul, this publication constitutes an accumulated image body, an emblem book of Ottawa icons that seeks to reveal and determine the visitors’ expectation of the capital.