Educated in Political Science, Public Administration and Economic & Social Development in Canada and the United States, Art has been a diplomat, foreign policy analyst and international development practitioner in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. His early career in Canada’s Foreign Service included assignments in Nigeria, Tanzania, Malaysia, Thailand, and India. From 1979–82 he was Canada’s High Commissioner to Bangladesh and Ambassador to Burma, from 1987–90 High commissioner to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, and from 1993–96 High Commissioner to Zimbabwe and Botswana and Ambassador to Angola and Mozambique.He was the Canadian International Development Agency’s Vice-President for Asia (1982–86) and for Multilateral Programs (1990–93. representing Canada on the governing bodies of the United Nations Development Programme, UNICEF, the International Program for Agricultural Development, the Food and Agricultural Organization, the World Food Programme and regional development banks in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. In 1993 he wrote the lead chapter, “Reflections on Sustainable Development”? for The Challenge of Sustainability, published by the Toronto based Centre for a Sustainable Future, and in 2001 “The Challenge of Global Urbanization”? in The Foundation for International Training by Legas Publishing in New York.

Since retiring form the Canadian Foreign Service in 1997 he has been a Senior Associate of UBC’s Sustainable Development Research Institute (1997–99) and currently of the Centre for Global Studies and the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives at the University of Victoria; a Director of the Foundation for International Training in Toronto, and a Governor the Canadian Unity Council. He has been a consultant on international trade in endangered species for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, on institutional development for the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, on poverty for the Department of Economic & Social Affairs of the United Nations, and on social development for the World Bank.

Since 2000 he has taught an annual interdisciplinary course on issues of sustainable development as a faculty member of the Canadian Studies in Africa program, which every year takes undergraduates from Canadian Universities to study in East Africa during the Spring semester.

Art lives in Victoria with his artist wife Sylvia Bews-Wright, and a boxer named Echo.