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. 

Our Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora Department strengthens its collection with two paintings by Lagos-born, Toronto-based artist Emmanuel Osahor, on view on Level 4.

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.

Sculptures about statues: spoke with London-based contemporary artist Thomas J Price about his nine-foot bronze cast sculpture outside the AGO, and his take on the meaning of monuments.

Since July, the corner of Dundas and McCaul Streets outside the Jackman Hall entrance has been home to Within the Folds (Dialogue 1) – an original nine-foot bronze cast sculpture made by London-based contemporary artist Thomas J Price. The sculpture, part of ArtworxTO: Toronto’s Year of Public Art 2021–2022, depicts a Black male subject standing upright in a relaxed position, gazing forward, wearing a casual hooded sweatshirt and pants.

In recent years, Price has become recognized for his large-scale sculptural works situated in public spaces. These massive bronze figures depict fictional Black subjects described by Price as “psychological portraits.” Their identities are derived from several sources, including real-life individuals observed and sketched by the artist and the use of 3-D scanning technology for body and clothing detail. Confronted with the towering presence of each figure, viewers are prompted to critically reflect on how they socially interact with Black bodies.

AGOinsider recently spoke to Price to find out more about the creation of Within the Folds (Dialogue 1), his philosophy on monuments, and what’s in store for his practice in the coming months. Read the full interview, here.

Tuesday March 29, 4pm via Zoom

Join Julie Crooks, AGO Curator, Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora, and catalogue contributors Christian Campbell, Emily Cluett, Dominique Fontaine, Andil Gosine, O’Neil Lawrence, Annie Paul, Marsha Pearce, Harclyde Walcott and Mary Wells for a conversation celebrating the publication,  Fragments of Epic Memory.

This critical volume includes works by Caribbean artists such as Wifredo Lam from Cuba, and Sir Frank Bowling and Aubrey Williams from Guyana—who represent the first generation of migrant modernist artists—alongside 21st-century artists such as Paul Anthony Smith from Jamaica (based in the US), Zak Ové from Britain (of Trinidadian heritage), Nadia Huggins from Trinidad (based in St. Vincent) and Sandra Brewster from Canada (of Guyanese heritage), among others. Their works, along with texts by prominent writers of Caribbean descent, serve as counterpoints to the historical photographs and the violence of the imperial project, constituting a conceptual generational bridge across history, geography, time and space.

Register, here.

Voting closes March 31, 2022. Get your vote in!

We are excited to share this year’s projects for funding consideration through the Volunteer Endowment Trust 2022-2023. As part of the Volunteer Council’s (VC) ongoing mission to demonstrate transparency in our decision making, Volunteer President Maya Kotlarenko has once again created an online voting process for the volunteer community to help choose the project you collectively want to support most. As a reminder, you won’t be ranking the projects, you can just choose one to support. Your vote matters!

Please click on the link to read more about this year’s funding options that support the Gallery’s strategic priorities of Art, Access and Learning:  https://forms.gle/Jm9dDzwA1RmApueP6

The 3 projects can be read about in much greater detail in the attached proposal PDF, prepared by Erin Thandini, Senior Manager of Philanthropy and Planned Giving.

Voting is open to volunteers until March 31, 2022.

Want to know more about the Volunteer Endowment Trust? The VET was established in 2001 with a Letter of Agreement between the AGO, The AGO Foundation and the Volunteers of the AGO. The original capital that created the fund continues to remain invested and an annual distribution of 4% of the fund (approx. $50,000) is made available in order to fund a project. Each year, the AGO’s Development team identifies 3 projects for consideration that reflect the Gallery’s strategic priorities.  Many thanks for your support!

Maya Kotlarenko,

Volunteer President, on behalf of  the Volunteer Council

Many of you will remember Florine Stettheimer Painting Poetry, a much loved exhibition back in 2017, the first major exhibition of her work in North America in 20 years, and the first ever in Canada.

Art Historian Barbara Bloemink has written a new biography and the author is interviewed in this week’s AGOinsider, linked here.

Hello Everyone,

Next week is March Break, which means that some of you will be on vacation and others will be busy working onsite greeting families visiting the AGO. It should be fairly busy at the museum as many people are venturing out more and health restrictions loosen. We have great art on view for our public to enjoy, including some exquisite recently installed works by Tom Thomson.

The next few months will be a transition period for all of us. As always, we will follow public health guidance. I will continue to wear my mask for the next several weeks along with LT members. It is important that we recognize that we are moving into a period where different people will have different perceptions of risk. We need to make sure we accommodate a range of perspectives. I ask that you all respect one another’s perspectives and communicate clearly with one another.

We’ve come a long way together and how we exit from this period is just as important as how we entered it – with the utmost respect for one another’s well-being.

Planning for AGO Global Contemporary is advancing and we will soon be interviewing a short-list of the top five architects who responded to our RFP. This is a project that will impact all facets of the AGO, and our aim is to create the Gallery that can successfully meet the future needs of our public.

Take care and stay safe,

Stephan

For more on these exhibitions, see this week’s AGOinsider