Hello Everyone,

This week marked the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre. We marked the occasion with programming and publicity, and it gave me a moment to reflect. It is a truly beautiful space, filled with monumental plaster sculptures, in an elegant gallery designed by Toronto architect John Parkin in partnership with Moore. Five decades later, it still feels contemporary.

Everyone has a story about the Moore Centre – it really does seem part of our museum and the city of Toronto. One of the paradoxes of the Moore sculptures is that while they look bold and monumental, they are actually extremely fragile. Lisa Ellis in Conservation spoke this week about how many of them are made of simple crude wood forms covered in chicken wire with a pretty thin layer of plaster. 

Click here for more information from Adam Welch in Curatorial and Lisa Ellis about the Moore Centre.

I know many of you are hard at work installing and ramping up for the upcoming exhibition The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century on the fifth floor. I have a feeling that it will be a popular exhibition for the holiday season.

Stephan