Gerry Ferguson was one of the most important conceptual artists working in Canada in the later years of the twentieth century. Gerry was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and came to the NSCAD in 1968 from Ohio State University.Garry Kennedy, the new president of NSCAD was assembling a new faculty body that would turn NSCAD into one of the most influential art colleges of the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Gerry was a pioneer in conceptual art and an influential teacher at NSCAD for over forty years. He exerted a tremendous influence over several generations of young artists graduating from NSCAD. In 1995, he was awarded the prestigious Molson Prize, worth $50,000.00, by the Canada Council for the Arts. In addition to his studio work and teaching,Gerry was a perceptive collector or art and assembled significant collections of folk art and the art of Nova Scotian painters from the first half of the twentieth century. Gerry’s best known work is probably the one million pennies that was first exhibited at the Granville Gallery in Calgary.