40 NATION MAKERS

A new generation of leaders are redefining Canada: thinkers, artists, politicos and entrepreneurs forging a stronger, more resilient country. Here, in collaboration with our sister publication Canadian Business, we present 40 young powerhouses who are building new institutions and shaking up the old ones.

- Profiles by Rosemary Counter and Alex Cyr

ANNA WEYANT

ARTIST

The renaissance woman with powerful connections

Anna Weyant paints like a 17th-century master—but with a touch of millennial malaise. The Calgary-born, New York—based artist blends old-world technique with eerie surrealism. In 2022, she became the youngest artist represented by the powerhouse Gagosian gallery (she also dated gallerist Larry Gagosian for a few years). Now, at just 30, she’s landed her first museum exhibit at Madrid’s Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza: an opus on the vulnerability and theatrics of female adolescence (with no shortage of wilting flowers and dangling ribbons). Her prices speak to her staying power, often reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars (and at least one, Falling Woman, sold for US$1.6 million). She’s also finding fame in the fashion world: Marc Jacobs, who has one of her paintings hanging in his Frank Lloyd Wright home, used one as a print in a recent collection and asked her to paint Kaia Gerber for the cover of Vogue when he guest-edited last year.

OLIVIA SMITH

SOCCER PLAYER

For getting Arsenal FC to shell out the big bucks