A place for AGO volunteers to share, learn, and connect
Volunteers, have you seen I AM HERE yet? The catalogue is dense and so beautifully designed – full of images! So visual! (thank you to Natalie, who sourced a copy for the volunteer lounge).
Everyone is really loving the show!
There are a number of “pop-up” art-making studio workshops, offered online over Zoom, for free! (Each Wednesday at 5:30pm, registration required). Check out the full series, here.
Stephan joins us in celebration of National Volunteer Week! (formally April 24 – 30)
It’s hard to believe we’ve been two years apart, but we’re encouraged by the recent staggered re-entry of volunteers back to the Gallery. We are on our way! Stephan joins us to update us on Gallery news, and AGO Vision 2028 – the path ahead!
We hope you can join us! As with all Stephan’s candid talks with volunteers, this talk will not be recorded. Please plan to attend.
A reminder: you can’t register in advance for this talk, simply click on the link below on Wednesday May 4, at 6pm (or just before), to join:
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87412155886?pwd=RW5VVXc0R3Q2U3NqUG9POGpwVEt6Zz09
Meeting ID: 874 1215 5886
Passcode: 956179
Hello Everyone,
I Am Here is finally here! And it looks spectacular. A show this big includes a lot of people so thank you to EVERYONE involved. It is a wonderful exhibit for our public at this particular moment in time, and it was kicked off with a celebratory dinner on Tuesday evening with many artists in attendance. Do take a moment to walk through the show – you will be struck by the number and quality of works ranging from home movies to photography to works on paper and paintings.
Next week, a few of you are travelling to Italy for the Venice Biennale. aabaakwad, an Indigenous led initiative founded by Wanda Nanibush, will be part of the programming in partnership with the exhibition The Sami Pavillion, in the Nordic Pavillion. It is an extraordinary undertaking, and several members of the Indigenous and Canadian Curatorial Committee will be there to experience aabaakwad and the rest of the fair. Thank you to the staff from numerous departments who are taking part in this significant trip – special shout-out to the Indigenous and Canadian Department.
During this time of year, many of you acknowledge the holy seasons of Ramadan, Easter and Passover. I hope this month of observance brings reflection, peace and joy.
Stay safe and take care,
Stephan
Dear Volunteer Community,
Thank you to everyone who took the time to submit their vote for the Volunteer Endowment Trust (VET) funding proposal. This year, we received 107 votes which is the highest level of participation we have seen since launching the democratic process in 2020. We are thrilled to announce that the project that the volunteers have chosen to financially support is Virtual School Programs. Virtual School Programs have made art and learning more accessible than ever before, removing financial and geographic barriers to participating and learning and helping the AGO connect with new audiences.
On behalf of the Volunteer Council and the AGO Development team, we thank you for your support!
– Maya Kotlarenko, Volunteer President
Get up close and personal with 12 emerging Canadian artists by tuning in to the AGO’s new original web series, Inner Space. Available at the end of every month, each episode follows a young artist who gives an intimate tour of their studio and a behind-the-scenes look at their creative process. Covering a diverse range of art forms and styles, each artist was co-curated by the Inner Space Youth Advisory with AGO Staff.
Made for youth and by youth, the current iteration of the Youth Advisory is project-based and is made up of members ages 16-25 from across Canada. Advisory members chose artists from their local communities to give a spotlight on their art.
These videos are personal and inspiring! Watch the series, linked here.
A new installation of 13 works from the AGO Collection explores queer connections to liberation, resistance and creativity:
Blurred Boundaries: Queer Visions in Canadian Art features a select 13 works, all pulled from the AGO Collection, by the likes of General Idea, Will Munro and Frances Norma Loring, alongside some recent acquisitions of Cassils, David Buchan and Robert Flack. Curated by Renata Azevedo Moreira, AGO Assistant Curator, Canadian Art, Blurred Boundaries is not intended to be an exhaustive survey of queer art in Canada, but rather, an entry point into broader conversations on the topic. Visitors are asked to consider how queerness is understood and visualized within the landscape of Canadian art. “This exhibition,” explains Moreira, “suggests queer readings in contemporary and historical works, offering connections that are not exclusively bound by gender or sexuality, but rather focus on how the works question the status quo of their time. What does it mean to explore, from a queer lens, our understanding of artistic practices today and 100 years ago? That’s the challenge.”
From the earliest cave paintings to TikTok, humans have found creative ways to document their day-to-day lives. I AM HERE: Home Movies and Everyday Masterpieces, a major new AGO exhibition opening in April of 2022, is a revealing look at our universal need to capture, share and cherish the everyday. 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.
Co-curated by Jim Shedden, the AGO’s Manager of Publishing, and Alexa Greist, AGO Associate Curator and R. Fraser Elliott Chair, Prints & Drawings, in collaboration with archivist, scholar and writer Rick Prelinger, the exhibition is a celebration of daily life and human creativity, replete with music and creative prompts. Among the artworks on display will be a digital collage of the more than 3000 submissions received from around the world as part of the AGO’s 2021 Portraits of Resilience exhibition.
Faith and Fortune: Art Across the Global Spanish Empire brings together more than 200 sumptuous and inspiring works of art from Latin America, the Philippines and Spain made between 1492 and 1898. This exhibition, from the collection of the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, allows us to study critically the mechanics of colonization by examining the visual culture of the Spanish Empire. As artists, books and patrons moved throughout the Empire, the art created was beautiful, highly international and cosmopolitan. Visitors will see Latin American, Filipino and Spanish paintings, sculpture, printed books and textiles alongside each other, revealing the material and artistic connections.
Through the lens of great art, visitors will encounter the global, cross-cultural movement of people, ideas and artforms happening across both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Beginning with the earliest episode of colonization — Columbus’s arrival in the Americas — the exhibition offers visitors important insights into the histories of resource extraction, the spread of Christianity, the development of racial categories and Indigenous resistance to conquest. These four centuries of art provide a unique perspective on the lasting legacies of colonization.
Organized by the AGO, from the collection of the Hispanic Society Museum & Library
Hello volunteers – from time-to-time we share volunteer postings with our community! Here’s a great opportunity to support Luminato. See details, below! – Holly
Potential Luminato volunteers can learn more about the benefits of joining the growing Festival team at: https://luminatofestival.com/support/volunteer/
Deadline to Apply: April 28, 2022.
If you have any further questions, please reach out to the Luminato Volunteer Office, via Jennifer Broydell [email protected]
Hello Everyone,
This week, while a crew is busy installing I am Here: Home Movies and Everyday Masterpieces at the AGO, there are two international exhibitions on view connected to the AGO: Diane Arbus: Photographs, 1956-1971 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, where Sophie Hackett attended the opening; and the Whitney Museum of Art, which features work by Denyse Thomasos. The art of Thomasos was introduced to the curator at the Whitney the other year by Renée van der Avoird, and now is showcased in this year’s Biennial.
These are two very good examples of the AGO leading global conversations. Below is an installation shot from the Arbus show in Denmark and a picture of Georgiana Uhlyarik and Sally Frater in front of a large work by Thomasos.
Also – we are pleased to welcome back the volunteer Gallery Guides to the galleries this month! Look out for Gallery Guides featuring new “Let’s Chat” lapel buttons and floor dots. Gallery Guides will be engaging visitors between 1-3pm daily, and 6-8pm on Wednesdays and Fridays, through a program coordinated by our Education and Programming Division.
Take care and stay safe,
Stephan
We know volunteers love checking out the new work in the Toronto Biennial of Art. Building on 2019’s theme of Waterways, What Water Knows, The Land Remembers, the second edition of the Toronto Biennial of Art opened on March 26, welcoming 37 artists, local and international, to nine different sites across the city.
Biennial sites are grouped in relation to both seen and buried waterways, and follow the trajectories of Etobicoke Creek, the Laurentian Channel, Garrison Creek and Taddle Creek.”
This week, AGOinsider published a sneak peek of their favourite installations, available here.
For more details, including site hours, upcoming programming, podcasts and publications, visit torontobiennial.org.
With many of us itching to spend more time outdoors and tend to our gardens, it’s undeniable: spring is in the air. On Level 4 of the AGO, two works on view offer up a poignant interpretation of this sentiment. I Have Been Thinking of my Father’s Garden (2021) and I Have Been Thinking of my Mother’s Garden (2021) by Nigerian-born Emmanuel Osahor are large-scale oil paintings cut from the same unstretched, unprimed canvas, hung delicately on the wall like tapestries.
Recently acquired after Art Toronto 2021, these paintings join the growing collection of works as part of the AGO’s Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora department led by Dr. Julie Crooks, including those by Bidemi Oloyede and Moridja Kitenge Banza, two other contemporary African artists with ties to Canada. Born in Lagos, Osahor immigrated to Canada over a decade ago and has since earned a BFA from the University of Alberta and an MFA from the University of Guelph. The recipient of the 2021 Plaskett Award, his work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions.
Read more about these evocative works in this week’s AGOinsider, linked here.