Katharine Lochnan, the AGO’s Deputy Director of Research and The R. Fraser Elliott Curator of Prints and Drawings chats with Rogers TV’s Daytime Toronto host Myrocia Watamaniuk about the innovative presentation of Drama & Desire: Artists and the Theatre, the AGO’ major summer exhibition, opening June 19 and on view through September 26.

For your weekend viewing, the second segment of Andyana Jones, shot in our very own King Tut exhibition, will air this Saturday at 10:30am on YTV during its CRUNCH program.

If you missed the first one, click here.

YTV is a Canadian specialty channel aimed at kids and their families. If a show is crazy, cool, clever and funny, chances are it’s on YTV!

Gerhard Richter at the opening of his 1988 exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Written with complete access to Gerhard Richter’s Archives, Dietmar Elger’s new book, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting was recently hailed by the Financial Times as a landmark text.

As Richter’s former assistant, Dietmar Elger, currently the main curator of the Galerie Neue Meister of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and head of the Gerhard Richter Archive, had the chance to delve into the personal stories and private archives of this influential German artist.

From the review:

Elger creates a splendid portrait of Germany’s postwar amnesia refracted through the prism of Richter’s rapid developments….he unravels a psychologically compelling story: how across the decades Richter’s art of restraint and non-commitment reaches its high points when he dared let flamboyance or emotion in by stealth.

The Art Gallery of Ontario has a long connection with Gerhard Richter, organizing his first North American retrospective in 1988, and, upon reopening in 2008, creating a room focussed on his art in the David and Vivian Campbell Centre for Contemporary Art.

Dietmar Elger will speak in Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario on Wednesday March 24^th at 7pm (Doors Open @ 6:30pm).  This event is co-presented by the Goethe-Institut Toronto, the Art Gallery of Ontario and University of Chicago Press.

Visitors to the AGO’s exhibition, King Tut: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs continue to marvel at the grand scale of Tutankhamun’s accoutrement – from golden jewellery to the elegant coffinette that held one of his internal organs.

Yet just a few months into Canada’s latest case of Tutmania, new research shows that the Golden King actually had physical ailments on an equally grand scale. As the Toronto Star’s Joe Hall reported, “King Tut likely limped through life and died a weary death from malaria and bone ailments.”

Check out the Star’s coverage of new research on Tut’s 3,300 year-old skeleton and DNA as reported in the Feb. 17 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Then visit the AGO’s exhibition (on through April 18) and experience the boy king in a new and unexpected light.

"Their Jesus had gorgeous rock star charisma"
- Peter Goddard, Toronto Star

"The colours are vividly romantic"
-Robert Fulford, National Post

"Both seductive and disturbing"
-Sarah Milroy, The Globe and Mail

"You can’t help but enjoy [it]"
-Robert Fulford, National Post

Read more of what’s been said about Sin and Salvation: Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision:
His Vision, Our Culture- Sarah Milroy

Casting light on an obscure culture- Adam McDowell

Sex, stunners and rock-star hair- Peter Goddard

Lessons learned, history remade- Robert Fulford

Image:
John Everett Millais (1829-1896),
Peace Concluded,1856,
oil on canvas, 116.8 x 91.4 cm.
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Putnam Dana McMillan Fund.

More and continued coverage of Transformation AGO from the past few days, by Shawn Micallef:

Frankly, it was the soiree of the year (Globe and Mail)

What makes the AGO familiar is that, once again, it’s such a happening place (Globe and Mail)

A Glint from under Gehry’s shadow (Globe and Mail)

For Ellis Don, failure was “not an option”on Transformation AGO project (Daily Commercial News)

Ken Thomson’s AGO legacy (Martini Boys)

Gehry revamps AGO, ads ears, python stairs (bloomberg.com)

Dazzling Dundas (Now Magazine)

Photo by jbcurio.

Since the grand opening last week, there as been a flurry of press and blog coverage. Here’s an incomplete list (note some of these articles contain extensive multimedia coverage):

The Art Gallery of Ontario has extra money. Our suggestion: Build an AGO Modern (The National Post)

Frank Gehry says revamped AGO will make Canada Proud (CP)

The new AGO: Part One (VOCA)

The new AGO: Part Two (VOCA)

A first look at the new AGO (BlogTO)

In Photos: The New AGO (BlogTO)

Transforming the AGO (Torontoist)

Welcome Home, Frank (National Post)

Gehry’s AGO so good it even smells nice (National Post)

Millions more given to AGO campaign (Toronto Star)

Gallery joins global wave of renos (Toronto Star)

Revamped AGO a modest masterpiece (Toronto Star)

AGO opens with Gehry’s Stamp (CBC)

The AGO’s backyard is getting its groove back (Globe and Mail)

Finally a world class museum to call our own (Toronto Star)

We see ourselves in the AGO and we like it (Toronto Star)

AGO: Not a shopping mall (Eye Weekly)

Standing (ren)ovation (Toronto Star)

In broad strokes; public loves AGO (Toronto Star)

Transformed AGO about to open its doors to public (Citynews)

Their New Perch (National Post)

Photo by OCAD 123.

In Toronto — and Canada in general — we’re often accused of constantly looking to the outside for approval and validation of what we do. If the New York Times writes about something Canadian, well, then, everybody pays attention. I’ve often thought this is an overly cynical view to take and overlooks the value of an outside opinion that isn’t as close the matter at hand. Yesterday architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff did indeed write about the new AGO in the Times and it’s worth reading along with the extensive coverage in the Canadian press. Ouroussoff hasn’t lived with the constructions fences or seen the building go up in daily increments and, one would assume, isn’t emotionally invested in this renovation the way a local is (press or civilian alike). He’s seeing it as any visitor would — all at once — and it would seem his thoughts aren’t so different from what our own writers and journalists are saying. Some excerpts:

Given that this is Mr. Gehry’s first commission in his native city,
you might expect the building to be a surreal kind of self-reckoning, a
voyage through the architect’s subconscious.

 

 

 

 

So the new Art Gallery of Ontario, which opened to the public on Friday, may catch
some fans of the architect off guard. Rather than a tumultuous
creation, this may be one of Mr. Gehry’s most gentle and self-possessed
designs. It is not a perfect building, yet its billowing glass facade,
which evokes a crystal ship drifting through the city, is a masterly
example of how to breathe life into a staid old structure.

 

 

 

And its interiors underscore one of the most underrated dimensions of Mr.
Gehry’s immense talent: a supple feel for context and an ability to
balance exuberance with delicious moments of restraint.

 

 

Ouroussoff also address the old and new collision that we’re so used to in Toronto:

As you travel deeper into the building, you experience a delightful
tension between old and new. From the lobby you enter a court framed on
four sides by the original museum’s classical arcades. A glass roof
supported on steel trusses has been cleaned up, and on a sunny day a
heavenly light pours into the space from two stories above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the far end of the court, a spectacular new spiraling wood
staircase rises from the second floor, punching through the glass roof
and connecting to the contemporary gallery floors in the rear of the
building. The staircase leans drunkenly to one side as it rises, and
the tilt of the form sets the whole room in motion. When you reach the
first landing, the stair rail keeps rising rather than becoming level
with the floor, so that your view back across the court temporarily
disappears and then returns. It’s as if you were riding a wave.

 

 

 

 

 

This is a textbook example of how architecture can be respectful of the past
without being docile. All the old spaces and the memories they house
are brought lovingly back to life.

Read the rest here.