WHAT'S HAPPENING WEDNESDAYS

BY: CAMERON CRAWLEY

Hello to all of you keyboard jockeys and welcome to this week's edition of What's Happening Wednesdays. The column will be fairly condensed this week due to the frazzled mental state of the author at this time of year, so let's jump straight into things shall we?

You might imagine that March Break is the perfect time to visit a new gallery, or perhaps even to take a leisurely stroll through one at your favourite museum. However that is decidedly not the case. March Break means you will be up to your eyeballs in the strife that is overtly excited children that are being poorly corralled through exhibitions by their stressed parents, like so many delirious sheep and neurotic border collies. With this in mind we have three events here that are (likely to be) mercifully free of March Break side effects.

First up on Sunday March 22nd, there is a curator's talk by Syrus Marcus Ware at The Power Plant Gallery to discuss their current exhibition The Unfinished Conversation: Encoding/Decoding. The exhibition discusses the physical manifestations and mind-set of specific visual dynamics post-WWII. This subject matter basically ensures that there will be no whippersnappers to cause problems in the gallery.

Someone appears to have mistaken this forest for a living room.
http://www.carrollfletcher.com/custom_images/800x500/usr/images/news/main_image/168/screen-shot-2015-02-04-at-11.40.44.png

Admission is free, with the talk starting at 2pm at the gallery. Further information about the exhibition itself can be found here.

Next up is a rather interesting and unique lecture/performance hosted by the ROM called ROM Speaks: Stories Without Borders. Bringing performance artists from diverse locales such as Congo and Yukon, these storytellers intend on taking you on a journey to where they consider home.

Tickets are $20 with the event running from 7-9:30 on Tuesday March 24th. Further details about the event can be found here.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is a new temporary exhibition called Faith & Place opening at the Ismaili Centre Toronto (49 Wynford Drive) in conjunction with the Aga Khan Museum. Through a series of original 19th century photographs of religious sites in Northern India, the exhibition showcases the rich diversity and stunning architecture extant in India.

Here's a sneak peek of one of the photos in the exhibition. Consider yourself lucky that I have these strings to pull to get you the VIP treatment.

The show runs from March 18th-April 8th and is absolutely free. Other reasons you should consider visiting the show are as follows: the Aga Khan Museum is open for free on Wednesdays from 4-8:30 (so you get to kill two museological birds with one stone), and that I have it on good authority that the curators of the show have poured their heart and soul into the exhibition and would greatly appreciate your support. Also the curators will know if you haven't seen the exhibit and you will effectively be dead to them.

Until next time, enjoy your museum visits and try to keep your sanity at this time of year!