We invite you to be a Part of NDSAtl24!

Join us at the 2024 National Docent Symposium in Atlanta, Georgia, USA as a Breakout Session or a Sip & Share table talk presenter. We’re accepting proposals now through October 15, 2023. Take advantage of these two opportunities to share your experience, knowledge, and touring and engagement strategies with your peers.

Breakout Sessions, the traditional 60-minute workshop, will feature up to 3 presenters sharing innovative touring and engagement strategies to engage with various audiences or ideas on expanding, training, or diversifying your docent corps. Click here for Breakout Session ideas and how to submit a proposal.

Sip & Share is an exciting new program initiative featuring table presenters sharing best practices in 15-20 minute sessions. In this two-hour program, docents and guides will rotate among the tables, beverage in hand, connect with their colleagues, and learn new ways to enhance their docent practice. Click here for more information about Sip & Share and how to submit a proposal.

Consider sharing your topic in both! Your Sip & Share presentation could hone in on one aspect of your Breakout Session topic. Or consider expanding your Sip & Share into a Breakout Session.

Act now! Session proposals are due October 15, 2023!

Questions? Email us at [email protected] directly, or please reach out to Shelagh Barrington, AGO Gallery Guide and NDS (National Docent Symposium) Director for Canada at [email protected]

Please note: participation in the National Docent Symposium is at volunteers’ own expense

Hello Everyone,

Many of you knew Phil Lind, a long-serving Trustee, from his decades of involvement at the AGO. Phil loved chatting to Curators and Protection Services Officers alike. He loved visiting to the AGO for board committee meetings, and was often in attendance at exhibition openings. He encountered many staff at such activities and always shared a smile and a kind word.

Sadly, Phil passed away yesterday. The message below was sent to our board earlier this morning. I thought you would appreciate hearing this news, too. We will miss Phil deeply.

Stephan

Dear Board of Trustees,

We are sharing some very sad news, as some of you might have read or heard, Phil Lind passed away yesterday.

Phil was a trustee for 18 years and, in light of his extraordinary contributions to the AGO, was invited to become a Trustee Emeritus at our last board meeting. He served on various board committees and contributed enormous amounts of wisdom and guidance over significant periods of change at the AGO.

Phil was a giant in the business world and worked hand-in-hand with the Rogers family to build one of the most successful companies in Canada. He was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2002 and inducted into the U.S. Cable Hall of Fame in 2012.

He was also very much a family man and would often bring his children, Sarah and Jed, and grandchildren to activities at the AGO. We all extend our deep sympathies to them and his long-time partner, Ellen Roland, a dear friend of the AGO.

At the AGO, Phil was particularly passionate about chairing the Modern & Contemporary Committee. During his tenure, the committee acquired several outstanding contemporary works including Adrián Villar Rojas, Today We Reboot the Planet, 2013; Tacita Dean, Antigone, 2018; and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, OPERA (QM.15), 2016.

Phil loved art – he loved learning, he loved ideas, he loved supporting artists, indeed art formed a major aspect of his life. Phil was incredibly passionate about his involvement at the AGO and made many, many important and lasting gifts. Some of them include:

– Stage III and Transformation AGO campaign gifts that resulted in the naming of the Anne Lind Artist-in-Residence Room and the Philip B. Lind Galleries

– Donations of art by Canadian artists Robert Fones, Iain Baxter & Stan Douglas, as well as significant works by Vija Celmins

– Exhibition support of many shows at the AGO reflecting his deep love for photography, including Scott McFarland: Snow, Shacks, Streets, Shrubs (2014), Thomas Ruff: Object Relations (2016), Mark Lewis: Canada (2017), Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory (2019), Diane Arbus: Photographs, 1956–1971 (2020), and most recently, Wolfgang Tillmans: to look without fear (2023).

– In recent years, Phil generously supported the commission of Brian Jungen’s Couch Monster: Sadzěʔ yaaghęhch’ill, 2022, and the acquisition of the Montgomery Collection of Caribbean Photographs. 

No doubt all of us hold special memories of encounters with Phil throughout the years. Phil always applied his mischievous charisma, sharp mind, and quick wit to every conversation. He was an amazing person and we will miss him.

We will share more information about a service for Phil once it is made public.

Rupert and Stephan

Hello Everyone,

I continue to poke my head into Zacks to see Cassatt-McNicoll whenever I get a chance. It is truly a beautiful paintings show. Do take a moment to see it, if you haven’t already, before it closes in a couple of weeks. It is my sincere hope that every staff member visits our exhibitions. Part of all of our jobs is to be informed about what’s on view in our galleries.

AGO camps will also be wrapping up soon. The youthful energy in the building has been amazing. It takes an extraordinary amount of work to make anything successful – AGO camps are a great success, thanks to the efforts of Education & Programming staff and all of you.

Take care,

Stephan 

We also want to take this time to thank our outgoing Volunteer Council. Much of the usual work of the Council was impacted by the pandemic, and we thank this group for their support as we all adjusted to the challenges of that time.

This Volunteer Council has years of volunteering experience between them, and came from all walks of the Gallery: prints and drawings, volunteer recruiters, information guides and gallery guides among them. Find our more about our Council members, HERE.

Thank you, Volunteer Council!

In her mixed-media ceramics-based exhibition, Heidi McKenzie enshrines collective memory

Some stories are told and re-told, yet still not widely known as they should be. In her solo exhibition at the Gardiner Museum, Heidi McKenzie aims to change that for Indo-Caribbean women, bringing centuries-old herstories into focus through a feminist lens. On view through August 30, McKenzie’s mixed-media, ceramic-based work is a record of the past and present lived experiences of Indo-Caribbean women from the mid-19th and early 20th centuries through to today. The Toronto-based artist is of mixed Indo-Trinidadian and Irish American heritage and explores themes of ancestry, race, migration, and decolonization through her practice. 

Read a full review of this moving exhibition in this week’s Foyer. Volunteers are reminded that they get free admission to the Gardiner, just by showing their volunteer badge at the front desk.

The AGO Library & Archives will undergo annual collections maintenance from Monday, August 21, to Friday, September 1. The Library & Archives will be closed to the public during this time, re-opening on Wednesday, September 6, at 1 pm.  

What does this mean for AGO staff and volunteers? 

• Staff and volunteers can still use the Library & Archives during the closure, but Library staff will not be available for assistance or retrieval of materials.
• Staff who are pre-authorized to sign out and borrow books may continue to do so. Please contact Debi Mills at [email protected] (ext 6390)
• The Library & Archives will resume regular service on Wednesday, September 6. 

Questions? 

• Reach out to Donald Rance, Reference Librarian, Electronic Resources, at [email protected] (ext 6353)

Hello Everyone,

As we head into the final weeks of August, many of you are preparing for upcoming fall exhibitions. Our Marketing team and Designers are working on shows featuring art by KAWS, Keith Haring, Arnold Newman, and others. I expect that the period of September through to the end of the year will be extremely busy, as it always is, and I am excited about our potential to engage audiences. We have a very solid and strong line-up.

So far this fiscal year, we are tracking well against our attendance and revenue projections. Keep it up!

Take care,

Stephan

We want to take this opportunity to thank and acknowledge the contributions of our outgoing Volunteer President, Maya Kotlarenko.

Maya began volunteering at the AGO in 2008, as part of Transformation AGO. She’s been a Gallery Guide – sharing her passion, growing expertise and a true love of art – ever since. In 2019, she answered the call for Volunteer President, bringing big strengths to light:  a knack for working with people, and an interest in helping all volunteers feel valued and appreciated, whether they’d been with the Gallery for three weeks, or thirty years. This would be a driving force of her Presidency, hallmarked by a new Volunteer Council brought together by interest as well as experience; Random Coffee – casual coffee break meet-ups, connecting volunteers across placements and programs; and, most significantly, through a new, democratic, volunteer-vote selection process that gave all volunteers the opportunity to choose an annual gallery project, funded by the Volunteer Endowment Trust.

During the Gallery’s extended covid-19 closure, and one-year into her leadership role, Maya pivoted with the pandemic, helming a Presidency off-site, and a program suspended. She helped us facilitate new diversity and inclusion training for volunteers, and lead successive discussion groups for volunteers and staff – all online.

The Gallery’s physical closure was a difficult time for volunteers, and we grew to know we could count on Maya’s unwavering support and partnership in the leadership of the volunteers and the program, in the face of provincial mandates that governed our staff and volunteer operations during those challenging years.

Post-pandemic, Maya graciously agreed to stay on as President, extending her term, as we carefully came back on-site. That stability allowed us to focus on coordinating a massive staff and volunteer return, retraining, and orientation; a big task in a still unsettled time.

Most recently, Maya’s enjoyed a refocus on her weekend Gallery Guide shift, reconnecting with visitors, and using art as a conduit for conversations. She joined in helping us recognize volunteer contributions at our annual party, an event that brought the community together again after so much time apart, and seems a most fitting way to cap off her Presidency (in celebration!)

On behalf of all of us, Maya, thank you for everything.  We’ll see you in the galleries!

– Holly Procktor, Coordinator, Volunteers & Alain Graham, Chief, People

In these summer months of tourist season, Foyer suggests some sightseeing, past and present

Like any city, the look and feel of Toronto’s urban landscape has changed drastically over the years. In the haste of rapid development, important opportunities to document the cultural history of a city are often missed. Recently, ERA Architects in partnership with Spacing magazine seized such an opportunity via a deep dive into the history of Toronto signs – in the form of a brand-new book.     

ERA partner Philip Evans and architect Kurt Kraler have teamed up with Spacing’s Matthew Blackett and 20 other contributors to publish and produce The Signs That Define Toronto. Adorned with striking vintage photography, the book explores the rich and diverse history of Toronto signage, using it as a lens to better understand the city’s ever-evolving identity.

AGO’s Foyer writers spoke to Blackett and Kraler to learn more about the inspiration behind the book and asked for their insights about the present and future of Toronto signage.   Read the full article, HERE.

Want to subscribe to Foyer, for art stories inside (and outside) the AGO. Sign up, HERE.     

AGO employees and volunteers are invited to take advantage of discounted rates on the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) this summer from August 18 to September 4.

The discount is only available online through the AGO’s corporate link. Click here for the discount. 

Note: If you are using your home computer to order tickets, follow this link or use this access code: 2023FM3P6MVT at https://shop.authentigate.ca/store/cne/corporate-login

Admission Pass: includes grounds admission, and access to all shows and exhibits. All ages.

• Corporate Price until Aug 17 online: $20.34
• Corporate Price from Aug 18 to September 4 online: $22.60

Ride All Day Pass: includes grounds admission and access to all shows and exhibits, and unlimited midway rides. All ages.

• Corporate Price until Aug 17 online: $44 per person
• Corporate Price from Aug 18 to September 4 online: $49 per person

Online buyers receive EXpress Entry at the CNE gate (vehicle gates excluded).

Savings based on General Admission. Regular prices: General Admission (14 to 64 yrs.) = $28.25; Children (5 to 13 years.) and Seniors (65 yrs. plus) = $22.60; Family Pass (2 adults and 2 children OR 1 adult and 3 children) = $84.75. Children 4 yrs. & under = Free; On-site R.A.D. Pass = $50 plus admission. Please note that Corporate Rates are not available at the gate. Prices include 13% HST (HST# 85076 5413 RT0001). Valid at midway rides only. A $2.99 processing fee applies to each ticket for all online transactions. All programs subject to change. Rain or shine.