Dear Everyone,

The Art Gallery of Ontario operates on land that is Michi Saagig Nishnawbe (Mississauga, Anishinaabe) territory and the territory of the Wendat and Haudenosaunee. Today marks Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a day of remembrance, reflection, action and learning about the history of residential schools, survivors, their families and communities, and the ongoing intergenerational effects of the residential school system.

If you are on-site today, you will see signage inviting visitors to be in reflection and spend time exploring contemporary Indigenous artists and artwork from across Turtle Island in J.S. McLean Centre for Indigenous & Canadian Art (on level 2),  Robert Houle’s installation Seven Grandfathers (2014) in Walker Court, the solo exhibitions of Michael Belmore (also on Level 2), Shuvinai Ashoona (on Level 4), and the work of Norval Morrisseau and Kent Monkman (on Level 1).

In recognition of the importance of this day, we invite staff and volunteers to take time today to engage in learning, reflection and acknowledgement of the history of this country and the lived experiences of First Nation, Inuit and Métis peoples within the borders of Canada. The following are some resources and AGO content to support you.

Resources

• AGO content:
  • AGO Insider story: A day to remember and reflect
  • A Continued Conversation on Residential Schools – June 2021

• Read about the deep history and 94 recommendations from the TRC report:
• The Survivors Speak – A Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 
• Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 1 Origins of 1939
• Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 2 1939 to 2000
• Canada’s Residential Schools: The Inuit and Northern Experience
• Looking Forward, Looking Back: Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples
• Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action

• Read the commentary article Truth and Reconciliation in the Arts and Culture Sector by the Arts Insights monthly publication

• Participate in virtual events for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation:
  • www.honourtheday.ca
  • National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation -Truth and Reconciliation Week (live and recorded sessions)

• Listen to testimonials from survivors of Residential Schools:
  • Legacy of Hope – Where are the Children
  • Legacy of Hope – Escaping Residential Schools Virtual Exhibition
  • Residential Schools Podcast Series

• Watch a documentary:
  • Phyllis Webstad – On Orange Shirt Day (2021, 7 mins)
  • Every Child Matters: Truth – Act One (2020, 46 mins), National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation
  • Mashkawi-ManidooBimaadiziwin Spirit to Soar (English Version, 44 mins), Tanya Talaga
  • Holy Angels (2017, 13 mins), Jay Cardinal Villeneuve
  • We Were Children (2012, 1 h 23 mins), Tim Wolochatiuk
  • We Can’t Make the Same Mistake Twice (2016, 2h 43 mins), Alanis Obomsawin
  • Sisters & Brothers (2015, 3 mins), Kent Monkman
  • Second Stories – It Had to be Done (2008, 22 mins), Tessa Desnomie

• Consider taking a course:
  • Reconciliation Through Indigenous Education (Starts September 30 for 6 weeks) – a free course by the University of British Columbia exploring how Indigenous histories, perspectives, worldviews, and approaches to learning can be made part of the work we do in organizations, communities, and our everyday experiences in ways that are thoughtful and respectful. In this course, reconciliation emphasizes changing institutional structures, practices, and policies, as well as personal and professional ideologies to create environments that are committed to strengthening our relationships with Indigenous peoples.

• Read a book:
  • The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
  • This Place: 150 Years Retold by Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, Sonny Assu, Brandon Mitchell
  • Sugar Falls – A Residential School Story by David Alexander Robertson
  • Fatty Legs by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton
  • Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City by Tanya Talaga

•  If you have the financial means consider donating by contributing to:
  • Legacy of Hope Foundation 
  • Indian Residential School Survivors Society 
  • Save the Evidence – Woodland Cultural Centre

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at [email protected]

Cian B. Knights (pronouns: she/her)

Manager, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Note: To participate in something more structured, Ruth Hartman, Volunteer, shares these additional links, noting the TRC reading challenge:

https://www.passemuraille.ca/trcreading/  and the main site  http://trcreadingchallenge.com/  (thank you, Ruth!)

On Tuesday October 5, artists Soumya Netrabile and Peter Shear join AGO Deputy Director & Chief Curator Julian Cox for a conversation about the extraordinary life and practice of Matthew Wong

On view now, Matthew Wong; Blue View is introducing visitors to the late Chinese-Canadian painter’s unique exploration of the many moods of blue. Comprising more than 40 artworks from Wong’s Blue Series – ranging from intimate gouache on paper compositions to large scale oil paintings – the exhibition marks the first major museum show of Wong’s work to date.   It’s been a really popular, poignant show, among visitors and volunteers, alike.

On Tuesday, October 5 at 7 pm, artists Soumya Netrabile and Peter Shear will join AGO Deputy Director & Chief Curator Julian Cox for a conversation about the extraordinary life and practice of Matthew Wong (register, HERE).

Ahead of their talk, AGOinsider connected with Shear and Netrabile – both friends of Wong – to find out how they first encountered the artist and why his work is so special to them. Read the interview, HERE.

In keeping with the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (September 30, 2021), it’s a good time to revisit A Continued Conversation on Residential Schools, a virtual discussion the AGO hosted in June 2020, about thoughtfully sharing the history and intergenerational effects of residential schools with children and youth.

Robert Durocher, Vice-Principal at Kâpapâmahchakwêw – Wandering Spirit School (TDSB), award-winning author, educator and artist Dr. Jenny Kay Dupuis, and hip-hop artist and activist Lindsay “Eekwol” Knight were joined in conversation with the AGO’s Dr. Audrey Hudson; linked HERE.

Also this past year, as part of the Shape of the Museum series, Paul Chaat Smith, Curator, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and Wanda Nanibush, AGO Curator, Indigenous Art spoke at length virtually about the roles museums and cultural institutions have in shaping complex conversations when exhibiting work made by Indigenous artists, linked HERE.

As part of our Diversity & Inclusion Learning, volunteers are invited to watch this Fireside Chat with Michelle Emson, about her personal experience of transitioning in her workplace, and the practices put in place to support her journey.

Watch the recording here (when prompted, enter Access Passcode: AGOS3pt!3)

As an additional resource, Michelle also recently led a learning session, “Workplace Inclusion for Gender and Sexual Diversity” for staff, that we are happy to share. You can watch the recording here (when prompted, please enter Access Passcode: AGOJun!0).

In this session, Michelle shares how staff and volunteers can be more conscious of how they interact with the public in gallery spaces, and how this can make a real impact.

Dawoud Bey (born 1953), John Edmonds (born 1989), and Wardell Milan (born 1977) — contemporary African-American artists from three generations — all consider how photographs continue to shape Black American experiences.

In these works, from series made between 2017 and 2019, the artists grapple with African-American visual representations over time. They are driven by various questions: What can photographs actually document? Can they evoke experiences of the past? Can their contexts be reinvented? Using a range of aesthetic strategies, Bey, Edmonds, and Milan each transform histories of violence and present complex and poetic visions of Blackness.

The works were all recently acquired by the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Presented in collaboration with the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival. On now until December 5.

In the 1960s and 1970s, documentary photography took on new power and meanings. In the aftermath of the Second World War, interactions shifted between citizens and their governments, between colonizers and the newly independent, and between other groups as new sociocultural dynamics evolved. This exhibition looks at how photographers around the world—from Bamako to Mumbai, Pretoria to Toronto—used their medium to celebrate, to witness, and to critique their worlds in new ways during a time of change.

Be it through sharply recorded detail or dynamic blurring, in the photography studio or on the street, in single images or in deliberate sequences, the artists chose a range of aesthetic approaches to bring the personal and the political into dialogue. On now until December 5.

Hello Everyone,

There is some amazing programming for Fragments coming up and if you’re onsite this weekend, check out AGO Live: Sonic Saturdays Steel Pan.

Our events section of the website https://ago.ca/events/browse has more details about this performance and other talks including an Art in the Spotlight talk with Georgiana Uhlyarik on the work of Mary Hiester Reid next Tuesday at 4pm (register, HERE) Mary Hiester Reid is the first woman artist to have a retrospective at the AGO – albeit posthumous – in 1922.

Take care and stay safe,

Stephan

PS – A reminder that next Thursday, September 30^th is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. I encourage you to wear orange shirts to honour the experiences of Indigenous Peoples including the effects of residential schools and their legacy.

Hello everyone,

I am enjoying hosting guests at the Bistro patio outside along Dundas. The Development team is doing a wonderful job bringing donors onsite. They are in action every day and it’s great to see them deepening relationships with AGO supporters. If you haven’t had a chance to enjoy lunch at the patio, do it soon while the weather is still glorious. Thank you to the Bistro servers who are creating a welcoming and safe dining experience for our public.

September 30^th carries additional significance this year. In June, the Federal Government of Canada announced this date as a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. It is deeply important to engage in learning and acknowledgement of the history of the country from an Indigenous perspective. The AGO will be open on this date and will invite visitors to be in reflection. Educational resources will be provided to our employees and volunteers as well as our public. Stay tuned for further details.

Take care and stay safe,

Stephan

In case you missed it, in January we took a glimpse into the gardens of Gustave Caillebotte. AGO curator Dr. Caroline Shields led a Close Looking examining the master Impressionist’s signature style

Since 2019, Blue Irises, Garden at Petit Gennevilliers (1892) by French Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) has been part of the AGO Collection. Dr. Caroline Shields, AGO Associate Curator and Head of European Art, discussed this painting at length in an AGO Close Looking Facebook Live talk in early January 2021.

This seemingly simplistic painting of blossoming blue irises offers a deeper insight into garden painting and its influence on late 19th century art history.

Watch Dr. Shields’ Facebook Live talk “Close Looking: Gustave Caillebotte” in full, linked HERE (via AGOinsider)

Andy Warhol was paid nearly $1 million to produce a portrait series featuring Black and Latinx trans women and drag queens in 1975. What can this body of work tell us about the representation of transgender and racialized people in art?

What does it mean to be increasingly visible in a world that both celebrates and targets you based on your identity? In 1974, Italian art dealer Luciano Anselmino commissioned Andy Warhol for a new series of artworks, after the two spent an evening at a seedy New York nightclub named the Gilded Grape. Fascinated by the spectacle of what he perceived to be men crudely attempting to “pass” as women, Anselmino asked Warhol to create portraits of drag queens and trans women of colour. After much negotiation, Warhol agreed and sent three collaborators to scout New York’s queer nightlife and cruising spots for potential sitters. 

The sitters, who did not initially know they would be photographed by Warhol, each received $50 per half-hour to pose, while one of Warhol’s recruiters, Corey Tippin, was paid $75. Warhol was paid $900,000 to produce 100 paintings and 10 prints, each in an edition of 100. In the end, he took over 500 photographs of 14 Black and Latinx drag queens and trans women, titled Ladies and Gentlemen (a series).

In conjunction with the major exhibition now open at the AGO, we hosted a virtual panel discussion to dive into the Ladies and Gentlemen series and its many implications. Artist and activist Ravyn Wngz and art historian Kirstin Ringelberg were joined in conversation by AGO Curator Kenneth Brummel and Interpretive Planner Gillian McIntyre, linked HERE (via AGOinsider)