Preview's Founder Recalls Guide's Expo Origins

by Michael Turner

Founded by Janice Whitehead in April 1986, Preview began as a guide to visual art exhibitions at Vancouver’s Expo 86 and surrounding venues. The first issue was titled ART86. Since then, Preview has published over 200 bimonthly issues that cover gallery and museum exhibitions in British Columbia, Alberta, Washington and Oregon. Though Whitehead retired from the magazine in 2017, she remains active in the local arts community.

Expo 86 was a provincially driven world’s fair located at the east end of Vancouver’s False Creek. In addition to “inviting the world,” the Expo 86 Corporation provided space for local cultural initiatives. Sensing an opportunity, Whitehead, then managing editor of Vancouver-based arts magazine Vanguard (1972–89), put together a visual arts guide using Vanguard’s advertising contacts and design tools. “We charged two dollars for it,” says Whitehead, “though collecting on sales was more trouble than it was worth. Thereafter we made it free.”

In the years that followed, Preview’s market widened. For Whitehead, expansion was less about a marketing plan than using accumulated resources and contacts. “I had for years attended the Seattle art fairs through Vanguard. It was more a case of working with existing networks. Galleries and museums were excited by a guide that provided cross-border listings and short reviews throughout the Pacific Northwest and Alberta.”

Ever modest, Whitehead is hard to pin down on Preview’s achievements, eschewing anecdotal success stories for the magazine’s overall endurance, its 40-year road to the present. Apart from having kind words for her staff, Whitehead admits that her greatest pleasure came from “making space for emerging and unheralded artists,” something the magazine still endeavours to do four decades on.

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