War art, and how The Star blew it again

A letter of mine, sent this morning to the Toronto Star:

While I appreciated reading about Joanne Tod's portraits of fallen Canadian soldiers, I was disappointed in Christopher Hume's lack of research into contemporary Canadian war art, and his implied criticism of the CF. His statement " Armies would now rather control what we see than have painters record it" completely ignores the Canadian Forces Artist Program, created in June of 2001 in keeping with a much older tradition. It also ignores the compelling work done by Richard Johnson, a Canadian combat artist recently embedded by the CF in Afghanistan. I hope that Johnson's gritty, poignant work wasn't overlooked simply because it was commissioned by a competing newspaper. And I hope The Star will give the CF the credit it's due for encouraging the production of Canadian war art today.

How tough is it to do a bit of research? Somebody in that newsroom needs to introduce Hume to the wonders of Google.

Update: BZ to both David Akin and Jeffrey Todd for painting a more accurate picture of the state of war art in this country.

Upperdate: I hadn't even noticed that DND actually put out a press release on the 7th that advised of an exhibition of Canadian Forces Artist Program pieces at NDHQ on the 9th.

At first I thought Hume was just lazy. But with the all the other pieces that have come together on this issue, including their unwillingness to post any sort of correction or retraction, I'm beginning to wonder if he and The Star are willfully ignorant.