New AGO Exhibition Explores the History of Industrial Photography in Canada
August 17th, 2011
“Oh the song of the future has been sung / All the battles have been won
On the mountain tops we stand / All the world at our command
We have opened up her soil / With our teardrops and our toil”
— Gordon Lightfoot, “Canadian Railroad Trilogy”
(TORONTO – August 17, 2011) A new exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario traces the history of Canada’s changing industrial landscape through the lens of some of the country’s most extraordinary photographers from the past 150 years. Songs of the Future: Canadian Industrial Photographs, 1858 to Today opens August 20 and includes more than 100 photographs by such artists as Alexander Henderson, William Notman, John Vanderpant, E. Haanel Cassidy, Ralph Greenhill, George Hunter and Edward Burtynsky.
Depicting railway and bridge building, quarries and mines, and the lumber, pulp and paper, and concrete industries in Canada, Songs of the Future traces the shifting perspectives on industry and the Canadian landscape from the Industrial Revolution to today. The exhibition highlights the ways in which the photographers’ perspectives on industry have shifted along with those of society at large, as celebratory images of human domination over nature give way to more critical views of industrial impact.
The exhibition is curated by Sophie Hackett, the AGO’s assistant curator of photography, who integrates works from various periods into thematic concentrations, including images featuring: the construction of the Victoria Bridge over the St. Lawrence River in the late 1850s; the building of the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company, a pulp-and-paper mill located in Grand Falls, Newfoundland, in 1912; and the development of the railroad in Canada.
AbEx Video: How we hang a priceless work of art!
July 4th, 2011
Ever wondered how we hang a priceless masterpiece? If so, you’re in luck. Watch this time-lapse video of our expert installers de-crating, hanging, and inspecting Willem de Kooning’s seminal Woman, I, a highlight of Abstract Expressionist New York: Masterpieces from The Museum of Modern Art.
You can catch a glimpse of Woman, I and 110 other Abstract Expressionist masterpieces through September 4, when the works head back to New York for good. Book your time and buy your tickets at www.ago.net/abex!
AGO Unveils One of the World’s Largest Public Collections of Motherwell Drawings
June 25th, 2011
“Nothing as drastic an innovation as abstract art could
have come into existence,
save as the consequence of a most profound, relentless, unquenchable need.
Abstract art is an effort to close the void that modern men feel.”
– Robert Motherwell
(TORONTO – June 23, 2011)
The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) continues to celebrate the Abstract Expressionist movement with an exhibition of drawings by Robert Motherwell. Painting on Paper: The Drawings of Robert Motherwell, on view June 25 through December 11, 2011, showcases 55 works from the AGO collection, which houses one of the largest public holdings of drawings by Motherwell.
“This exhibition gives visitors the opportunity to explore the mind and works of Motherwell, an eloquent and passionate Abstract Expressionist,” says Mathew Teitelbaum, the AGO’s Michael and Sonja Koerner Director and CEO. “Painting on Paper enriches the Abstract Expressionist New York experience at the AGO, giving visitors an in-depth look at the artistic process and evolution of one of the movement’s major figures.”
Curated by Brenda Rix, the AGO’s assistant curator of prints and drawings, Painting on Paper demonstrates how Motherwell’s motifs were imagined, refined and revisited over the span of his career by organizing the collection into several major chronological themes, ranging from the 1940s to the 1970s. The works on display were selected primarily from 74 drawings and paintings by Motherwell acquired by the AGO in 1998.
“Motherwell aims to express human feelings and the human spirit through gestural lines and bold forms,” says Rix. “His painterly drawings, executed on a wide variety of papers, reveal an admiration for the unique textures and tactile surfaces of paper.”
Read the rest of the press release by clicking here.
AGO Celebrates Iconic Canadian Artist Group General Idea with Major Retrospective
June 22nd, 2011
Haute Culture to occupy AGO’s contemporary tower through January 2012
“This is the story of General Idea and the story of what we wanted. We wanted to be famous, glamorous, and rich. That is to say, we wanted to be artists and we knew that if we were famous and glamorous we could say we were artists and we would be.”
— General Idea, excerpt from “Glamour,” FILE Magazine, vol. 3, no. 1, fall 1975.
(TORONTO – June 22, 2011) Next month, the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) will open an exhibition of unprecedented scale that celebrates the work of the Canadian artist group General Idea. Occupying more than 20,000 sq. ft. of Gallery space on the fourth and fifth floors of the AGO’s Vivian & David Campbell Centre for Contemporary Art, Haute Culture: General Idea — A Retrospective, 1969 – 1994 will be on view July 30, 2011, through January 1, 2012. The exhibition features 336 works by the groundbreaking multidisciplinary group, including 107 works from the AGO collection, spanning their prolific and influential 25-year career.
Curated by Paris-based independent curator Frédéric Bonnet, Haute Culture is the first comprehensive retrospective devoted to General Idea, a collaboration between artists AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal that began Toronto in 1969. The group’s transgressive concepts and provocative imagery challenged social power structures and traditional modes of artistic creation in ever-shifting ways, until Partz and Zontal’s untimely deaths from AIDS-related causes in 1994.
“General Idea is a truly seminal Canadian artist group whose diverse and increasingly influential production warrants deep and comprehensive consideration,” says Matthew Teitelbaum, the AGO’s Michael and Sonja Koerner Director, and CEO. “We are so pleased to mount an exhibition of their work on this large a scale, as I know that our visitors will find their exuberant and exacting vision to be intensely rewarding.”
Haute Culture is organized around five themes central to the trio’s production: “the artist, glamour and the creative process”; “mass culture”; “architects/archaeologists”; “sex and reality”; and “AIDS.” In addition to the works on view inside the exhibition, the AGO will install the artists’ two-metre-tall AIDS sculpture at the corner of Dundas West and Beverley streets. The lacquered metal sculpture, created in 1989, is based on Robert Indiana’s 1970 LOVE sculpture and will be on view throughout the exhibition’s run. Other highlights of Haute Culture include:
- a selection of works that have not been exhibited in more than 25 years, including the installations Playing the Triangle, P is for Poodle and XXX (bleu).
- documentation of The 1971 Miss General Idea Pageant, a performance originally staged in the AGO’s Walker Court, including a recently rediscovered 12-minute video clip from the performance;
- Mondo Cane Kama Sutra, a gallery of 10 2.5 x 3-metre paintings depicting three neon-coloured poodles engaged in a variety of sexual positions;
- elements from The 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion, including The Boutique, a dollar-shaped sales counter displaying various artist multiples, and Test Pattern: TV Dinner Plates from the Miss General Idea Pavillion, an installation of 432 wall-mounted porcelain plates with television-style colour bars printed on them;
- numerous large-scale photographic works, including Nazi Milk, P is for Poodle and Baby Makes 3; and
- elements of their AIDS project, including paintings and wallpaper, which will be installed throughout the exhibition, recalling the posters, paintings, stamps and other iterations of the image that were circulated worldwide in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
To read the rest of the press release, click here.
Artist Libby Hague’s AGO Installation Extends to Gallery Façade
June 10th, 2011
(TORONTO – June 10, 2011) Toronto-based artist Libby Hague’s new installation at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) extends beyond gallery walls and onto the AGO’s Dundas Street façade. Libby Hague: Sympathetic Connections, on view June 11 through September 11, is part of the AGO’s Toronto Now series of rotating contemporary projects by Toronto artists. The installation transforms woodblock prints into paper sculptures that connect across the walls, ceiling, and external windows of the AGO’s Young Gallery.
Sympathetic Connections combines representational and abstract forms in a room-spanning three-dimensional installation. Colourful sculptural forms crafted from Japanese paper fill the gallery, dangling from walls and cascading down from the ceiling, while a wall-mounted print of a nuclear power plant looms in the periphery, an image inspired in part by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan earlier this year.
“Libby Hague’s playful, yet foreboding narratives give physical form to fictional worlds that simultaneously mirror and manipulate reality,” says Michelle Jacques, the AGO’s acting curator of Canadian art. “Sympathetic Connections provides a timely exploration of our problematic relationship with the natural environment, invoking universal themes of responsibility and dependency, vulnerability and rescue, and risk and luck.”
Click here to read the rest of the press release.
Michael Snow Receives 2011 Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO
June 6th, 2011
(TORONTO – June 6, 2011) Michael Snow, one of Canada’s most internationally celebrated artists, is the winner of the 2011 Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO for his remarkable contribution to the visual arts in Canada. The AGO and the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation will commemorate the award at a reception on June 10, and next year, the AGO will host an exhibition of Snow’s work. The cash prize has been increased by $15,000 for 2011, and Snow will be the first artist to receive a $40,000 award.
Born in 1928 in Toronto, Snow has led a prodigious career, spanning eight decades and including painting, drawing, sculpture, photo works, film, video, projection, sound installation, experimental jazz, and book works. Snow’s work continues to be shown in galleries and museums around the world, including recent solo exhibitions at Le Fresnoy in France, Angels in Barcelona, and the British Film Institute in London.
“Michael Snow’s contribution to art in Canada is unparalleled,” says Matthew Teitelbaum, the MIchael and Sonja Koerner Director and CEO of the AGO. “The breadth, innovation and creative vision of his work have been consistent throughout his career. The Art Gallery of Ontario is pleased to collaborate with the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation in presenting this prize to Michael, who’s specific genius permeates each medium he interacts with.”
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Canadian Artist Kathleen Munn Receives Homecoming Exhibition at AGO
June 1st, 2011
(TORONTO – June 1, 2011) The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) will open a unique exhibition featuring Canadian artist Kathleen Munn on June 4, on view until August 28. The Passion of Kathleen Munn will feature nearly 40 works by Munn, including her highly regarded Passion Series drawings, as well as paintings and prints that introduced Post-Impressionism to Canada beginning in the 1910s. In addition, the exhibition will be supported by archival material from the AGO’s collection, including sketches, notebooks, diagrams, collages and a custom-made light box.
Born in 1887 in Toronto, Kathleen Munn was one of the first Canadian artists to embrace abstraction. Little known yet much admired by fellow artists, Munn studied in New York, and during the 1920s travelled to Europe and exhibited with the Group of Seven. Around 1939, she stopped making art due to family obligations and an unresponsive art public in Toronto. She spent the rest of her life here in relative obscurity, only to be rediscovered a decade after her death in 1974.
The Passion of Kathleen Munn is a collaboration between the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Art Gallery of Windsor (AGW). Georgiana Uhlyarik, assistant curator, Canadian art at the AGO, has amassed important loans from private collections as well as archival material, with special focus on Munn’s work in the 1930s. Cassandra Getty of the AGW curated the travelling exhibition Kathleen Munn and Lowrie Warrener: The Logic of Nature, the Romance of Space, which surveys Munn’s career innovations. Together these form the AGO installation.
“In keeping with our dedication to collecting, exhibiting and researching work by Canadian artists, the AGO is pleased to launch The Passion of Kathleen Munn,” says Matthew Teitelbaum, the Michael and Sonja Koerner Director, and CEO of the AGO. “Munn’s work was groundbreaking in the history of Canadian art and merits the attention of a wider audience. This exhibition beautifully combines her innovative work with fascinating aspects of her life and process.”
Click here to read the rest of the press release.
AGO Launches AbEx with Two Show-Stopping Events
May 11th, 2011
(TORONTO – May 11, 2011) The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) will celebrate the arrival of the exhibition Abstract Expressionist New York: Masterpieces from The Museum of Modern Art with two major public events. The first is a public party featuring some of Toronto’s hottest DJs and an exclusive exhibition preview. The AbEx Opening Party, with DJ sets by Egyptrixx, The Makeover, Luis Jacob, and Jaime Sin, will take over the AGO’s Walker Court on May 27 from 9 pm to midnight. The exhibition opens to the public the next day at 10 am.
Two weeks later, on June 13, the AGO will host an all-star performance presented in partnership with the Luminato Festival that celebrates the explosion of creativity that rocked New York in the 1950s. Spontaneity: A New York State of Mind features some of Toronto’s most talented musicians and writers performing landmark works from the era in which the Abstract Expressionists dominated the international art world, including:
- acclaimed jazz trumpetist Nick “Brownman” Ali, leading a jazz ensemble that will play works by New York jazz giants Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and others;
- dancer and choreographer Peggy Baker, performing choreography inspired by Merce Cunningham;
- pianist Eve Egoyan and musician Paul McCulloch performing the music of John Cage and Morton Feldman; and
- writers Lynn Crosbie and Stuart Ross reading poetry and prose by the New York School and the Beats.
Misha Glouberman, host of the Trampoline Hall lecture series, will host the evening, which will include screenings of films by Hans Namuth and Shirley Clarke. The event begins at
8 pm and ticketholders will have exclusive access to the exhibition from 6 pm.
Tickets to the AbEx Opening Party are $25 for the public and $20 for AGO members; tickets to Spontaneity are $30 for the public and $15 for AGO members. Tickets to both events are on sale now and can be purchased online at www.ago.net/tickets and by phone at 416-979-6655.
Click here to read the rest of the press release.
Tickets to AbEx On Sale April 30 at 10 am at the AGO
April 20th, 2011
(TORONTO – April 20, 2011) Tickets to Abstract Expressionist New York: Masterpieces from The Museum of Modern Art, which opens at the Art Gallery of Ontario on May 28, will go on sale to the public on April 30 at 10 am. On view for just 14 weeks, this landmark exhibition — a Canadian exclusive — features more than 100 works by the legendary artists whose drips, splatters, and fields of incredible colour catapulted New York to the centre of the international art world in the 1950s and changed the course of art history forever.
To celebrate the arrival of the exhibition, the AGO is throwing a public party the night before the opening. The AbEx Opening Party will feature live music and DJs in Walker Court, a cash bar, and advance access to the exhibition. The party starts at 9 pm on May 27 and continues to midnight. Tickets are $25 for the public and $20 for AGO members, and will also go on sale April 30.
Abstract Expressionist New York will be time-ticketed by the hour to ensure shorter wait times and greater convenience for visitors. Ticket prices range from $16.50 for youth and student visitors to $25 for adult admission. Admission is free for children ages 5 and under. Beginning April 30 at 10 am, tickets can be booked online at www.ago.net or by phone at 416-979-6655.
AGO members receive free admission to Abstract Expressionist New York, and are invited to attend exclusive previews of the exhibition on May 26 (10 am – 5:30 pm) and May 27 (10 am – 8:30 pm). Members do not have to pre-book tickets to the exhibition and can avoid the general line by presenting their membership card and exhibition ticket to enjoy access to an exclusive VIP line. AGO members also receive a 10% discount on merchandise purchased in the AbEx satellite shop, in addition to their discounts at shopAGO, caféAGO, and FRANK, the AGO’s signature restaurant.
Click here to read the rest of the press release.
Katharine Lochnan talks Drama & Desire on Daytime Toronto (Video)
June 2nd, 2010
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.