Many thanks to Melissa Smith for passing this volunteer opportunity along, through her work with Access. Full details below:

The White Cane Week Experience Expo is a fantastic opportunity to not only make a great impact in our community, and a day to learn about living with vision loss, but also to meet new lifelong friends!

• Date: Saturday, May 28, 2022
• Time: 11AM until 3:30PM
• Location: Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre, Main Gym (750 Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2J2)
• Directions: Corner of Spadina and Bloor Street West

A whole day event consisting of an expo, forum, and community social, it is one of the most important events for the organization and they can’t do it without the help of the wonderful sighted guides and support staff to keep things running!

Lunch and dinner are provided for all volunteers Please see the links to our website, the event website, and the volunteer sign-up sheet below:

Canadian Council for the Blind Toronto Visionaries Chapter Website:

http://www.ccbtorontovisionaries.ca/

White Cane Week Experience Expo Website:

https://ccbnational.net/shaggy/experience-expo/

Volunteer Sign-up Form

https://forms.gle/dqr4Htw4Vih67Ebq8

The CCB Toronto Visionaries is a local Toronto chapter of the Canadian Council of the Blind, a national registered charity.

Established in 2013, the CCB Toronto Visionaries is dedicated to breaking the isolation that so often accompanies vision loss. We encourage our members to be inspired by their peers, to build supportive social networks through sharing information, and to engage in a wide range of social and recreational activities.

Featuring lost-and-found home movies from the Prelinger Archives, alongside celebrated artworks by the likes of David Hockney, Patti Smith, Claes Oldenburg, Annie Pootoogook, Arthur Jafa and Mary Pratt, as well as snapshots, photo albums, letters, television, grocery lists, and social media, I AM HERE brings together a broad range of personal records from different time periods and locales to explore the shared human impulse to document life as it happens.

Join Alexa Greist, (the exhibition’s Co-Curator) for this training session, via ZOOM:

(A reminder, you can’t register for this talk in advance, simply click on the link below the night of to join us):

Join Zoom Meeting https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83368788793

Meeting ID: 833 6878 8793

We look forward to seeing you there!

Hello Everyone,

For the last few months, managers have been back on site for at least 3 days a week. It is really great to have so many of you back. We are in a much better place than we were in the winter – all provincial COVID health restrictions are now lifted, which means some of the protocols that were previously in place, such as social distancing, are no longer required.

At this point, with our immunization policy in place for all returning and new staff and volunteers, as well as our encouraged mask wearing, the AGO continues to be a safe environment for all of us and our public.

Going forward, the vast majority of remaining staff will be returning to work for a minimum of 3 days a week as of June 1st. This gives everyone a couple of weeks to plan for coming back onsite. If you have any questions about what this means to you, please speak to your Leadership Team member. It’s really important that we have opportunities to engage with one another face-to-face – this will help us communicate better and be more efficient and productive. 

Take care, Stephan

For the second in our series of chats with curators for Museum Month, we sat down with the City of Toronto’s new Chief Curator to discuss a shared love of Robert Houle, the tyranny of the object and how museums can further social equity.

It was a surprise and delight for residents of Toronto, when the news broke last week that beginning this month, general admission will be permanently free at all City of Toronto History Museums. There are ten museums, providing home to a collection of more than one million archaeological specimens, 150,000 artifacts and 3,000 works of art, and the move to free admission is only one of several new initiatives the city is undertaking to advance greater diversity, equity and inclusion, and confront the colonial legacies of its sites.

Leading the charge is the city’s new Chief Curator, Armando Perla, who assumed the job in January. A trained human rights lawyer originally from El Salvador, he comes to Toronto following stints as an international advisor on museums, human rights and social inclusion for the City of Medellin, Colombia and at the University of Toronto. AGOinsider caught up with him to find out more about his vision for change and what excites him about Toronto. Read the full interview, here.  

Hello Folks, 

I have to say that a couple of days of nice weather does put many of us in a good mood!

Something else that puts me in a great mood is food – which I often enjoy at the AGO Bistro. In many ways the Food & Beverage team faced some of the largest impact of the pandemic. It is heartening to see them rebuilding the business. Carlos tells me that demand is increasing for having events at the AGO and guests are coming back to enjoy the Bistro. 

If you stop and think for a moment – the complexities of what our team does is truly astonishing. On average a guest uses 3.5 pieces of cutlery, 1.7 glasses, 3.7 plates. We have had 2,800 guests served in the last 10 days – that is a lot of dishes to be washed – so thank you to the dish washers! Have you ever thought about how all the food actually arrives at the AGO and gets transformed into a delicious meal? I just want to take a moment and say thank you to the entire F & B team.

I also want to mention that Chef Renee is great at linking the menu to the exhibitions. This summer the exhibition Faith and Fortune: Art Across the Global Spanish Empire will be the inspiration.

Stephan

This June, the Gallery is hoping to begin hosting in-person talks again. You can register for FREE for these upcoming presentations (note: if, in addition to being a volunteer, you are a Member or Annual Passholder, please register as such). If you are neither, you can register by clicking on the Adult ticket (there are no staff or volunteer categories). Talks upcoming, include:

Faith & Fortune: Curator’s Talk

Saturday June 11, 2pm in Baillie Court Reserve tickets, here.

Join Curators Adam Levine and Tahnee Pantig and interpretive planner Gillian McIntyre for a conversation about Faith and Fortune: Art Across the Global Spanish Empire.

Prior to becoming Assistant Curator of European Art in 2020, Adam Harris Levine held various curatorial roles at the AGO and conducted extensive work with the Thomson Collection of European Art. He is currently finalizing his doctoral dissertation at Columbia University, where he has also taught extensively. Levine’s area of specialty is medieval and renaissance sculpture and decorative arts.

Gathering Colour: Anong Migwans Beam

Monday June 13, 7pm in Baillie Court Reserve, here.

Join Artist and paint maker Anong Beam for a talk about her love of pigment, paint, colour, and innovation.

Anong Migwans Beam is a painter from Mchigeeng First Nation on Manitoulin Island and is inspired by the physical history of place, the natural landscape, and the relationship between water and memory. Anong was born to artist parents, Carl Beam and Ann Beam, who encouraged her to develop as an artist. She was raised with a meaningful connection to both her artistic familial roots and rich ancestral heritage. Beam’s large format oil paintings incorporate a multitude of image making approaches, including photo transfer, printmaking and collage.

Presented in partnership with the Colour Research Society of Canada: AIC 2022 Toronto Sensing Colour.

Closes May 15!

Hello Everyone,

This week’s news about the architect team for AGO Global Contemporary has been well received. Thank you to the Comms Team for rolling the news out. The process for selecting the team was incredibly demanding and rigorous but worth the effort. I am confident that we selected the most talented team for our project. Annabelle Selldorf is an extraordinary architect who has worked on numerous international museum projects. Brian Porter of Two Row will bring a vital Indigenous perspective and aesthetic, and Don Schmitt of Diamond Schmitt, based in Toronto, is the executive architect who brought this team together.

Now that we have the team in place, things will start to move very quickly in terms of planning. All of you will be involved in this process in some fashion, and it will be a huge and deeply motivating undertaking. Don’t forget why we are doing this – we want to lead global conversations from Toronto through extraordinary collections, exhibitions and programs, and by reflecting the people who live here.

I am pleased and grateful for everyone’s engagement with the organizational assessment led by Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO). More than 200 of you participated in 16 focus groups and 70% of you completed the internal survey. Thank you! I have been thrilled to see so many staff at all levels take part, which is a testament to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility being a core value of the AGO.

CPAMO is currently sharing the assessment results with the Leadership Team and will work with us to understand the data and recommendations. The final report will be provided at the end of May, and CPAMO will present at an upcoming Town Hall in June. I look forward to us all moving into the next phase of action.

It is wonderful to see so many of our volunteers back in the Gallery, particularly this week, being National Volunteer Week. To all our Volunteers – we appreciate you!

Thanks and take care,

Stephan

This week is National Volunteer Week, an important moment to share our heartfelt thanks for the contributions of our AGO Volunteers.

To mark the occasion, AGOinsider caught up with Maya Kotlarenko, who has volunteered at the AGO for the past 14 years. Maya currently serves as Volunteer President—a surprising position for someone who “hated being in museums” when she was young. She has developed a true love of art over her lifetime, citing Kent Monkman’s The Academy (2008) as one of her favourites in the AGO Collection. 

Maya shared her thoughts with us on life as an AGO Volunteer, supporting Virtual School Programs and the importance of making art accessible. The full article is linked here.

Happy National Volunteer Week everyone! It has been a rough 2 years apart, but we’re so pleased to be slowly welcoming you back! This week (especially this week) we pause to thank you for your commitment and dedication, enthusiasm and support through this challenging time!

Whether you are greeting or guiding, helping patrons find prints or programs, each year you collectively dedicate thousands of hours to bringing art and people together, and we simply couldn’t do it without you.

Last week, I snapped this candid pic of Rochelle and Mary; together, they have 50 years of volunteering at the Gallery between them! It was amazing to catch up with them in person after all this time- (in their happy place, in matching masks no less!)- connecting visitors with art, once again.

One portrait among many, we are grateful to all of you – our 400+ volunteers – for dedicating your time and talents to supporting the Gallery! #NationalVolunteerWeek