American-born Walter Halsey Abell, one of the first professors of art in Canada, spent much of his early career at Acadia University, in Nova Scotia, where he taught from 1928 to 1943. While there, he helped found the Maritime Art Association and was founding editor of the magazine, Maritime Art (1940), the first magazine in Canada about the visual arts and the precursor of Canadian Art (1943). He became noted for his theoretical Marxist and psychological viewpoints on art. In 1943 he moved to Ottawa to briefly join the staff of the National Gallery of Canada before heading to Michigan State University. He taught there until his death in 1956.