Holidays help us bust out of our rut – and goodness knows we need that more than ever this year, as we’re all quite literally in lockdown mode. Most of us can’t celebrate with our extended clan, so help spread a little cheer by sharing your holiday tradition – big or small – or maybe you’re trying something entirely new?
Holly’s on deck to share some holiday crafts. Join in the fun by sharing a favourite memory, ornament, recipe/beverage, book or new habit (the sky’s the limit) you’ve joyfully taken on in this pandemic year. Let’s start the Holiday season with a positive spin. See you there!
Groundbreaking African-American photographer Ming Smith canonizes Black culture with an abstract flair. Recently acquired by the AGO, seven stunning prints by Smith chronicle a diverse array of moments, including a romantic boardwalk stroll and an experimental jazz show. All are part of the powerful new photography exhibition, Documents, 1960s – 1970s.
Born in Detroit, Michigan, and raised in Columbus, Ohio, Ming Smith was the daughter of a photographer. However, it wasn’t the family business that inspired her career as an artist. After graduating from Howard University in 1973, Smith moved to New York City to work as a model while making photographs in her spare time. There, on a go-see to the studio of Anthony Barboza, Smith’s career path and life would forever change. That day she was introduced to members of the iconic, Harlem-based, Black photographers’ collective Kamoinge (pronounced Kah-mong-gee), whom upon seeing some of her photographs immediately inducted her into the collective—she was its first and only female member. With a new-found artistic identity, she began exploring her fascination with street photography, creating some of the most stylistically interesting work known to the medium.
World-renowned artist and cinematographer Arthur Jafa considers Ming Smith to be “The greatest African-American photographer ever.” Smith’s style is marked by her use of intentional blurriness, giving the subjects she photographs a surreal and mystical quality. This elevates her documents of Black life into more emotional, philosophical or even spiritual expressions. Her body of work is an equal mix of community-focused street photography and portraits of influential Black artists, like jazz legend Sun Ra (pictured above) and pop icon Grace Jones. Smith’s work has been referenced by many, including Jafa himself, whose critically acclaimed cinematography in the film Daughters of the Dust was partially inspired by her.
Smith’s work has been exhibited and acquired by major museums (Tate Modern, MOMA, Brooklyn Museum), and her unique and gravely important contributions to the Black cultural archive and the art world at large are beginning to get the acclaim they deserve—albeit belatedly. Hopefully, through the continued erosion of barriers faced by Black women artists, Ming Smith will receive even higher praise in the coming years via major survey exhibitions and awards.
Seven of Smith’s recently acquired prints are part of Documents, 1960s – 1970s, located in the Edmond G. Odette Family Gallery on Level 1 at the AGO.
Those of you on social media might recognize the How It Started / How It’s Going meme in which people post an image representing a naively optimistic version of themselves , followed by one where life has taken them in a different direction. We’re starting to highlight a similar experience for volunteers, showing what was featured at the AGO when they first started volunteering, then what they are doing now that the pandemic has changed the art scene. First up: Shelagh Barrington, Gallery Guide.
Judy Chicago with The Dinner Party, 1982
How It Started: Viewing the AGO’s recently acquired (2018) six preparatory works, four ceramic test plates and 2 drawings made by Judy Chicago for the original installation of The Dinner Party brought back strong memories of my first volunteer experience. In 1982, I was among a group of young businesswomen and 50,000 other people who lined up to visit the AGO to view Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party. This unusual work of art, now housed at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, attracted our young feminist selves and prompted feminist dialogue in the Toronto press. Later, that afternoon over drinks and enthusiastic talk about the show we learned about the dire plight of our Toronto’s women centre, The Pauline McGibbon Cultural Centre.
In the late 1970s, in response to the 1975 International Year of the Woman, the Pauline McGibbon Cultural Centre came into existence in an imposing two-storey red brick building at 86 Lombard that had originally housed the Toronto City Morgue. Unfortunately, the Centre very soon ran into financial trouble through overly ambitious plans to run a for profit centre and restaurant.
After a few meetings and much input and discussion, a newly formed group of young feminist volunteers resolved to save Toronto’s Women’s centre and sketched out a rough business case to keep the doors of the PMCC open.
A fun but often tense few years learning to run a not for profit business by the seat of our pants. We charged smaller than usual commissions for art sales of new and developing artists, assisted new playwrights launch their work, offered the centre for very reasonable fees for women’s events, put on music nights and gambling fundraisers. We worked with the federally funded Katimavik youth employment program and often we and our better halves and friends volunteered to staff the rental and fundraising nights. We were saved financially many times by the fact that we could put off paying the very hefty heating/cooling bills as the buildings furnace/ac also looked after the attached ambulance centre next door!
(In 1984 I got married there and I believe I can claim that we are the only couple married in what had been, Marty Shulman’s 2nd floor Coroner’s Court in Toronto’s old City Morgue!)
In 1985 our group of volunteers decided to close the Pauline McGibbon Cultural Centre as both for and not for profit institutions, around the city of Toronto were more efficiently handling the varied cultural needs of women. In 1996 I began my next volunteer experience with the AGO.
How It’s Going: Today because of COVID-19, many of us are visiting our favourite galleries, around the world virtually through internet connections. Here, in Toronto this past fall, together with a small group of friends I attended the Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit at the old Toronto Star office and publishing plant at 1 Yonge St. The immersive exhibition is on a roughly 40-minute loop so if it suits, you can enter at any point and remain as long as you like. There are social distancing circles on the floor, but you can move around and there are a few benches for seating and an elevated platform for a different perspective.
We practised social distancing and wore masks. After a timed entry we followed the floor directions to the tunnel-like entrance way. Several wall screens on either side highlighted the different periods of Van Gogh’s artistic life with accompanying paintings. Once we leisurely absorbed the facts, a blackout curtain was raised for us and we entered a large lowly lit hall. It was like watching Van Gogh paint the walls and floor with his beautiful scenes accompanied by a great soundtrack. Immersive Van Gogh is an entertainment experience but also a unique introduction to the art of Van Gogh. Art does not need to just hang on gallery walls!
Would you like to share your own reflections on what was happening at the AGO when you started and what you’re experiencing now? Contact Anne Fleming at [email protected]. Any length is fine, as are image-based submissions.
As you now know, the Gallery is currently closed as part of the 28 day lockdown for Toronto and surrounding areas. This means that Christine, Trish and myself (Nicole) are back to working from home, as we prepare for the gallery’s re-opening with Studio 54: Night Magic. While the Gallery is closed, we will continue to share updates as they come in. Many of you may have registered for the upcoming Artist’s talk with Haegue Yang which has been postponed. In the meantime, I have re-shared the Curator’s Talk with Adelina Vlas on Haegue Yang (here) as a primer for this exhibition.
Finally, since the holidays are approaching and we are all being reminded to shop at small businesses, I wanted to highlight that shopAGO is currently open for online orders starting December 1st (watch your inbox for a volunteer invite to the members’ sale, December 7 -13). The AGO Bistro is also open for takeaway and curated at home dinner options (click here to learn more). Read on!
Stress Relief through Art!
Volunteer Favourite – Marchesa
With the continued stresses of the lockdown, working from home and the upcoming holidays, we will continue to share some stress relieving content from our expanding collection of online talks. This week we return back to with another Mental Health Moments as part of a very important regime of self care. This talk (linked here) led by Adult Education Officer, Lauren Spring, explores two artworks including Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of a Seated Woman with a Handkerchief and Agustus Edwin John, The Marchesa Casati. Slow down and delve deeper into these very popular paintings through a frame of mental health. I hope you will find these informative and calming!
How are you taking the time to de-stress right now? Have you started a new practice that helps you de-stress that you would like to share? We would love to hear about it!
Ragnar Kjartansson: Death is Elsewhere
Since opening at the beginning of November, Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson: Death is Elsewhere has been a a buzz with visitors! This video installation filmed in 360 degrees featuring two couples of twins as they sing a song about beauty and loss. Filmed in the midnight sun in lush greenery with the shadow of Laki volcano in south Iceland in the distance, where there was a fissure that caused massive destruction back in 1783. This piece was acquired long before Covid-19 was in existence, but the sentiment is not lost on the visitors who engage with the 77 minute long video installation. It is beautiful, somber and poignant. This video installation is now a part of our permanent collection and you can read more about it in this article in Forbes Magazine when it opened last year at The Met.
“In Your Face” was a People’s Portrait Project (2006), an exhibition of portraits collected from the general public to celebrate the individuality and diversity of Canada.
As a volunteer, Shelagh Barrington remembers
spending hours working with staff and other volunteers gluing these incredibly
varied 4×6 inch portraits onto 4×8 foot panels in preparation for mounting on
the walls all around the AGO.
Artists from three Toronto art-based community
organizations contributed 400 portraits to the Art Gallery of Ontario’s In Your Faceexhibition. This
collaboration allows inner-city youth and adults living in poverty to connect
with the Gallery and have their art displayed in the AGO.
“Our goal is to bring these artists into the
Gallery, to see their own contributions on display and feel a connection to
this place. By providing these art-based organizations with AGO memberships, we
hope the artists will return again and again to explore other parts of the Gallery,”
says Bev Carret, the AGO’s manager of government and community relations, who also conceived the
partnership.
The three community organizations – Adelaide Women’s Art Studio, Art Heart and Sketch–provided studio space, workshops and a safe environment to those interested in making art. They made it possible for various groups, such as women who have experienced homelessness, street kids and the Regent Park community, to participate in creating the portraits on display.
A very popular installation, In Your Face is a collection of personal portraits created by the public on 4×6 inch cards and mailed into the Gallery for exhibition. Nearly 20,000 submissions have been received since the exhibit opened in August 2006. Over 4,000 portraits remained on display, featuring such unusual items as tinfoil, human hair, modelling clay, fabric, wood, papier mâché, rug-hooking, crayon, magic marker, photography and collage.
In Your Face Aug 2006 to October 2007.
If you’d like to contribute a memory of exhibitions past, send along your submission (with pictures, if possible) to Anne Fleming, Volunteer Communications at [email protected]
When prompted for a passcode, please enter: 9@^9Hd$t
A special thank you to Dr. Julie Crooks, who we congratulated on her promotion to helm the Gallery’s new Department of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora
To read a great article with Julie about the Gallery’s new Department of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora, click here.
Due to a rising number of COVID-19
infections, this afternoon Premier Ford announced that the City of Toronto and
the region of Peel will face further restrictions as of 12:01 a.m. Monday,
November 23. This means that the AGO will be open this weekend and close
to the public as of Monday, November 23.
I know that this is not the news we wanted
to hear. We have been living with the virus now for 8 months, and the
uncertainty has taken a toll. Everyone has worked very hard to ensure that our
visitors have had a safe and enjoyable experience while at the museum.
All of us have done an excellent job and we have delivered. However, the
health, safety and well-being of our visitors, employees, volunteers and our
extended AGO community is always our top priority. We must follow the directive
of our public health professionals and the government.
At this time, we anticipate remaining closed through Sunday, December 20. The Province did not provide a firm end date but suggested that they will assess the new measures over the next four weeks. We will continue to monitor the situation, and we look forward to welcoming visitors to the AGO again. Any visitor who had booked a time ticket to visit over the next four weeks will be contacted and offered a refund.
Although the AGO is closed, we will still
be serving our public in the following ways:
Our virtual schools program will continue providing parents and schoolchildren with art classes every weekday
Our online courses and talks will continue as planned
shopAGO’s online shop will continue to take and fulfil orders
Leadership Team has determined the list of
employees who are critical to sustaining the AGO’s operation and need to be
onsite while we are closed. Critical staff were identified in March.
Since March, the majority of our colleagues have been working from home, following work plans that have been approved by their manager. We will be reviewing the onsite work that will need to continue while we are closed and will communicate this with you as soon as possible. I know that this creates more uncertainty and it’s my commitment to you that we will resolve this quickly.
We are committed to following the advice of health and government officials and we will communicate with you regularly during the closure.
IMPORTANT: Later this afternoon, the Premier will be making an announcement regarding COVID-19. We don’t have any advance notice about what this might mean for us but it’s possible there will be increased restrictions or a shut-down. Please stay tuned – I will be sending another message out by day’s end. It will likely take a couple of days for further clarity and to sort out next steps.
I want to acknowledge the exhaustion that everyone is feeling. We’re at a point where every day seems exhausting. You have all been doing amazing work. In spite of the difficulties of the past several months, we have accomplished incredible things together. Take a moment to think about that – we have extraordinary art on view, a safe, welcoming building, and engaging online content – we have shown adaptability and resilience. Hold tight.
The AGO Board of Trustees met on Wednesday and I was pleased to share highlights of what we’ve accomplished – everything from the AGO Plan (shared AGO staff salary reductions), the special offer for frontline workers, acquiring new works, and pivoting to virtual programs for schools. I was very proud to tell our trustees about what we’ve done together. Leadership Team is working on a solid plan for the next two years that includes strategies on how to get us through the COVID period and beyond.
Dr. Julie Crooks, recently announced Curator, Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora, formerly the AGO’s Associate Curator of Photography
Dear Volunteers,
Please join us for this exclusive talk – organized especially for AGO volunteers – with thanks and in recognition of this year’s Volunteer Endowment Trust donation to support the ongoing research and support of The Montgomery Collection of Caribbean Photographs.
Dr. Julie Crooks will share all the work she has done this far with this unique collection, including some behind-the-scenes stories of its path to the AGO (Q&A to follow):
Meeting ID: 935 9232 4262 Passcode: 382466 *Please note: this is a one-time link. You cannot preregister for this talk – simply click on the above link at 5:30pm on Wednesday November 18 to join. We’ll see you there!
