Norman Laliberté
Born in Massachusetts to French-Canadian parents, Laliberté was raised in Montreal and received his first formal training at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. He later earned degrees from the Institute of Design in Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Laliberté spent the first year of his life in Worcester, but grew up speaking French in Montreal. Just after turning 18 years old while living in Montreal he was drafted by the U.S. Army for service in World War II. His good fortune was that by the time he completed basic training at Fort Knox, the war ended (“I didn’t have to kill anybody, and nobody got to kill me,” he told Wicked Local in 2013). He did serve for a year and a half in postwar Germany.
He taught at Kansas City Art Institute, Boston College, Notre Dame and Rhode Island School of Design and published dozens of how-to books—about woodcuts and stencils and ink drawing and masks and, of course, banners.
Laliberté became a central figure in Canada’s visual culture during the 1960s. At Montreal’s Expo 67: Laliberté served as the Artistic Director where he was instrumental in shaping the visual identity of this landmark event.
His Montreal landmarks include work he created for the Hôtel Intercontinental, the Château Champlain, and the David Culver Atrium at Maison Alcan. In Toronto, we believe that Laliberté created banners for temporary installation St. Michael’s Cathedral, St. Basil’s / University of St. Michael’s College and the Newman Centre (University of Toronto).
Among the numerous other important projects, they include the “Vatican Project”, for the Vatican Pavillion at the 1964 to 1965 New York World’s Fair when Laliberté recruited Rhode Island School of Design students to help him assemble his 88 banner designs for the interior of the pavillion. Also he completed massive aluminum panels for Logan International Airport in Boston, tapestries for the lobby of 31-storey New York office building. He went on to design banners for the headquarters of the New York State Bar Association in Albany in 1971, stained glass windows on the theme of the Bill of Rights for the New York State Supreme Court building in Albany, 25 “whimsical siłk banners” (according to The Boston Globe) for the lobby of a new Children’s Hospital building.
Laliberté continued to work until his death in Nahant, Massachusetts in 2021 at the age of 95. His art is represented in major collections worldwide, including the Smithsonian Institution, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.
