A GIFT GUIDE FOR MUSEUM PEOPLE

Beyond Tradition | Erika Serodio

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As our first semester comes to a close, many of the first year Museum Studies students have remarked on the joy of being surrounded by so many like-minded people in our program. There are obvious characteristics that draw people to this field. If you’re reading this blog, you probably have Museum People in your life. And if you need a gift for that special someone, you should keep in mind that we like cultural experiences, we have an affinity for the tactile, and we are drawn to aesthetics. Read on for a few gift ideas for your new (or old) museum friends.

EXPERIENCES

Museum people love to take part in cultural activities. We enjoy watching eclectic films (note the use of the word films, not movies) and we like to do so in old elegant theatres like the newly opened Paradise on Bloor. A gift card for a night out at the theatre would be a real treat this winter. Or better yet – just buy tickets and drag your museum friend to the show you want to see!

Paradise Theatre on Bloor | Source 

An annual pass to a museum like the AGO would be a great gift for the museum people in your life. But the museum people in your life might already have a pass… in which case you should get tickets for one of the many talks and events put on by some of the great institutions in your city. Who wouldn’t want to spend an evening at the ROM learning about The Human History of the Mosquito?

TACTILE

Museum people prefer flipping pages to scrolling. Encourage this tactile habit with a subscription to an arts and culture magazine like Canadian Art or Frieze!

Photograph courtesy of Erika Serodio.

Should we keep our agendas on our phones and laptops like the rest of our technologically advanced society? Maybe. But museum people tend be old school and impractical. We write down our plans on paper. And the crowd favourite in museum studies classrooms seems to be the Moleskine.

After we manually check off every item on this week's to-do list, museum people return to flipping pages for pleasure. An artsy coffee table book would be much appreciated! I recently gifted one from this gift guide in a Museum Studies gift exchange. Each book on this list is recommended by an artist, collector, gallerist, or curator.

ART 

And last, but not least, museum people do not have blank walls. Add to their personal collection with something aesthetically pleasing.

The Champs by Stephanie Cheng | Source 

Stephanie Cheng is a Toronto-based designer with designs that are infused with local landmarks and people. You can buy from her online store or from one of several shops who stock her work.

Mass by Annie Axtell | Source

Annie Axtell is a printmaker and artist who works out of Vancouver. She makes some seriously sublime art. You can buy her prints online or pick up one of her infamous lunar calendars at this shop in Toronto.

One last thing to remember about museum people is that they value the intangible just as much as the tangible. The gift of your time is never wasted on them. You could take your museum people to free events like this gallery party at the Power Plant or go an adventure in mental spelunking at the new Architecture and Design Gallery. Whether you're shopping or not this season, be sure to spend some time with your museum people. 

TORONTO MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES YOU MAY NOT HAVE VISITED YET

THE GRAD SCHOOL GUIDE

BY: LAETITIA DANDAVINO-TARDIF

When we think of museums around Toronto, the first ones that come to mind are the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) or the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). Yet, there are so many more. Here are just a few of my favorite cultural museums or art galleries in Toronto I bet you haven’t checked out yet. These institutions are all located in Toronto core and easily accessible by public transportation, so there is no reason for not visiting them in the upcoming months.

1. Gardiner Museum

111 Queen's Park, Toronto, ON M5S 2C7

The Gardiner Museum, the leading Canadian ceramics museum, is known worldwide as a great specialty museum. Although small looking compared to its neighbor, the ROM, the Gardiner holds a permanent collection of almost 3000 pieces. This collection includes ceramic and porcelain treasures from all around the world, and from Ancient to contemporary objects. Every year, the museum mounts three temporary exhibitions. Clay workshops are available, if you have a creative mindset or want to learn techniques. This past winter, it had a nationally acclaimed exhibition Yoko Ono: The Riverbed and, in 2019, it will hold the highly anticipated Ai Weiwei: Unbroken exhibition. Finally, the Gardiner Museum is at a 10-minute walking distance from campus. Admission is free using your OMA membership card.

A post shared by Gardiner Museum (@gardinermuseum) on Jul 12, 2018 at 7:17am PDT

2. Textile Museum of Canada

55 Centre Avenue, Toronto, ON M5G 2H5

In the heart of downtown Toronto, the Textile Museum is the only museum in Canada that dedicates its collection, research and exhibitions to the media of textiles. The TMC’s 13000 artifacts from around the world cover nearly two millennia. It is a fascinating way to explore, discover and understand various cultures. A past exhibition I personally enjoyed was Artistry in Silk: The Kimono of Itchiku Kubota, which made one discover Japanese culture and landscapes through Kubuta’s Kimono designs. Finally, entrance is also free with your OMA card.

A post shared by Textile Museum of Canada (@textilemuseumofcanada) on May 10, 2018 at 8:41am PDT

3. Ryerson Image Centre

33 Gould Street, Toronto ON M5B 1W1

The Ryerson Image Centre is in Ryerson University’s School of Image Art’s building. It focuses its collection, exhibitions and research on photography and related media. I recommend going to see the Scotiabank Photography Award: Shelley Niro, 2017 winner, before it closes on August 5, 2018. In addition to the main galleries, the RIC has a Student Gallery that showcases the artworks and curatorial practices of Ryerson University’s students or recent alumni. The RIC is walking distance from the Eaton Centre and its admission is free to all.

A post shared by Ryerson Image Centre (@ricgallery) on Jun 11, 2018 at 2:58pm PDT

4. The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery

231 Queens Quay West, Toronto, ON M5J 2G8

The Power Plant is Canada’s leading non-collecting public gallery dedicated to contemporary visual art. It is located at the Harbourfront Centre in a mid-1920s powerhouse. The Power Plant is pro-active in showcasing diverse living artists and engaging with a variety of audiences, thus fostering a local-global dialogue related to contemporary art practice. The gallery holds three shows per year (fall, winter and summer). Many MMSt students attended its Summer Opening Party, last month, to see the exhibitions of Ellen Gallagher, Abbas Akhavan and Grada Kilomba. The Power Plant also offers a large programming of lectures, film screenings, and holds a Sunday Scene speaker series. This art gallery is free to all.

A post shared by The Power Plant (@thepowerplantto) on Jun 26, 2018 at 1:22pm PDT

5. 401 Richmond

401 Richmond Street West, Toronto, ON M5V 3A8

If you are in a different mindset, take time to discover an arts-and-culture hub: 401 Richmond Street West. Located in the heart of the Fashion District, this restored heritage industrial building is home to a mix of over 140 creative minds. It has twelve art galleries and thirty artists' studios, which hold many events throughout the year such as performances and exhibitions. Galleries I recommend checking out include Abbozzo Gallery, Open Studio and Gallery 44. As one can see, visiting 401 Richmond is a full day of great and diverse discoveries, and is free!

A post shared by 401 Richmond (@401richmond) on May 26, 2018 at 8:23am PDT

BONUS: Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto

158 Sterling Rd, Toronto, ON M6R 2B2

You have probably not visited the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada (MOCA) recently as it has moved to a new location in the Junction in the landmark heritage Tower Automotive Building. Save the date: opening day is September 22nd, 2018. The MOCA builds upon the experience of the former Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA) having held 200+ exhibitions with works of over 1,100 Canadian and international artists. The moving from its previous location on Queen West to a larger space accommodates the museum’s ever-growing aspirations and significance. In its new 55,000 square foot home, the MOCA integrates artist residency studios and workshop space for educational programs. I had the chance to visit the new building, under construction, during the Doors Open Toronto and I am looking forward to its opening. Admission will be free to the permanent collection and student memberships are $20.

A post shared by MOCA Toronto (@mocatoronto) on Jun 23, 2018 at 10:20am PDT

I hope you will take time to visit these museums and art galleries and make the most out of their great events and programming! As MMSt students, it is important to visit a variety of cultural institutions to broaden your knowledge of museum practices, as well as complement with and make the most of your graduate experience. Follow up on events organized by MUSSA to learn about other opportunities to visit these museums and more!

FROM HARVEY WEINSTEIN TO THE MUSEUM: ART FOR LISTENING & HEALING

SHE'S MY MUSE

BY: KATHLEEN LEW

Trigger Warning: discussions surrounding sexual violence 

Writing about the recent spotlight on sexual assault in the media is going to be difficult.

Graduate school has taught me the importance of challenging myself. We need to work through our confusion and frustration to move forward. I am going to give it a shot, and it’s not going to be perfect; however, with the privilege of this platform, as a future professional in a creative industry, I need to try. 

There have been many high-profile sexual assault cases gaining public attention over the past month. Social media has been filled with statements and activism.

Source.

The recent news is not just one case. Multiple industries are being forced to look inward in a very political and public space. Statements from women and men are revealing the troubling power dynamics in creative industries. Some of the most publicized cases have involved Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, director James Toback, Olympic gymnast doctor Larry Nassar, photographer Terry Richardson, web series creator Andy Signore, and Toronto musician Ethan Kath. The list continues.

I want to make it very clear that sexual assault is not a recent phenomenon. Victims of the recent high-profile cases are valid and should be heard. But these headlines are not unfamiliar instances. Abuse of power has been a reality long before, and outside of, the Harvey Weinstein “scandal”. There is a reason victims were silent about Weinstein for years before speaking out. Many experience gendered power and violence as they walk down the street, go to work, within their homes.

#MeToo. Source.

How do we react when a large number of people are shocked about something that most women have been aware of since birth?

Online, this question has been answered with hashtags—most familiar to English speakers is #MeToo. In French #BalanceTonPorc (snitch out your pig), in Italian #QuellaVoltaChe (that time when…), in Spanish #YoTambien (Me too). There are many versions in different languages based internationally.

Using hashtags, women and men have been sharing their experiences, demonstrating the prevalence of sexual violence. The online movement forces people to confront sexual violence and the impact it has on everyone from famous actresses to their Facebook friends. 

French posters calling gatherings to support victims of sexual harassment. October 2017. Source.

I feel both solidarity and confusion when I read #MeToo. 

What about those who cannot post, or who cannot bear to read? What happens to the victims who are still in danger, who are not emotionally ready to share publicly, who do not have access to the internet, or who did not survive their experiences?

#MeToo creates a highly politicized environment that lacks context and complexity. Can gendered power and violence be reduced to a hashtag? To an extent, hashtags can engage those previously unaware of gendered violence. But who do they isolate?

When and how do online campaigns become action off our screens?

These are the questions that have informed my museum visits this month. In the context of my confusion, I present two museum muses to you.

1) Amalia Pica’s Ears to Speak of at The Power Plant (curated by Carolin Kὅchling)

Ears to Speak of opened before recent events; however, I found it an extremely thought-provoking exhibition that provided insight into my current struggles. 

Amalia Pica, Ears, 2017. Ears to Speak of. The Power Plant. Photos courtesy of Kathleen Lew (2017). 

Pica’s work, Ears, addresses the “failures and impossibilities of communication and obsolete technologies.” The exhibit features monumental re-constructions of 1920-1930 acoustic radars. These radars were quickly proven outdated by new technologies, now “monuments of failure.” Pica highlights this failure by re-creating them in cardboard, a material that absorbs sound. 

Pica’s art demonstrates the complexity of communication, and questions how interpretation can be productive. 

Amalia Pica, In Praise of Listening, 2016. Ears to Speak of. The Power Plant. Photos courtesy of Kathleen Lew (2017).

The exhibition also shows In Praise of Listening, large hearing-aid sculptures in marble, soapstone, and granite. Pica demonstrates the personalization of listening, and human attempts to communicate despite increased difficulty.

Ears to Speak of shows us the complexity of communicating, listening, and connecting. How can we listen to each other? How can technology help and hinder that listening? How is communication dictated by power hierarchies?

I believe Pica’s art provides important considerations for interacting with #MeToo and each other. I highly recommend attending before it closes at the end of December. I did not know that silence could be so loud.

2) Walking With Our Sisters, travelling art installation

Not a museum exhibit but very much a muse, Walking With Our Sisters is a commemorative art installation for the thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. It has been travelling across the country, most recently in Toronto at the Aboriginal Education Centre. It closed a week early in Toronto because of instructions from elders, so unfortunately, I was unable to see it in person. However, I have heard and read so many wonderful and important things, that I thought I would still share it with you.

A crowd-sourced project, the installation features over 1700 hand-made vamps (moccasin tops) to represent the unfinished lives of Indigenous women and girls. The space is set as a lodge that you move through clockwise to see the vamps installed on the floor. The space includes smudging, an Indigenous cleansing ceremony.

Below is an interview with Metis artist Christi Belcourt on Walking With Our Sisters. 

The installation gives attention to the lives that are often not spoken about. Each vamp is unique, representing the distinct voices and identities of missing and murdered women.

Walking With Our Sisters will not let victims be forgotten. The installation creates an Indigenized space for silent healing, involves Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, and takes action against missing and murdered Indigenous women. It empowers visitors to speak and to act.  

Source.

What can we learn from these museum muses?

Ears to Speak of teaches us to listen to the voices and the silences. It inspires us to question the power of communication, and how technology influences interpretation. What does it mean to share experiences on the internet and what are the limitations?

Walking With Our Sisters teaches us about healing. It honours those who cannot post #MeToo. It brings individual voices to community spaces. It shows how anger and sadness can become art and action.

I do not want the conversations surrounding recent media coverage and #MeToo to be another movement lost in the online archives. I’m far from knowing all the answers, but those who are able should try to work through the confusion.

The museum might be one of the places that we can do that.

MARIA HUPFIELD: THE ONE WHO KEEPS ON GIVING

EXHIBITION REVIEWS

BY: TABITHA CHAN

First room in the exhibition

(Photo: Tabitha Chan)

Maria Hupfield is an Indigenous Canadian artist who combines hand-sewn sculptures and multimedia video installations to create a dynamic conversation about the complex relationship between humans and objects. Her work encourages viewers to consider the significance of objects beyond their physical materiality and to reflect on the process of how objects become embedded with meaning. These ideas are illustrated in her current solo exhibition titled “The One Who Keeps On Giving” at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery.

Hupfield is a member of the Anishinaabe Nation at Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario. Her work often draws from her Indigenous heritage to explore the relationships between people, places and objects. She replicates objects that are typically seen as “Indigenous” or regionally specific in industrial felt to neutralize their materiality and to examine what it means for them to take on a new “contemporary” identity.

Second room in the exhibition

(Photo: Tabitha Chan)

The exhibition is presented in two adjoining rooms. White walls and bright lights characterize the first room that visitors enter into, while the second room is distinguished by darkness and shadows. The first room features six groupings of work that are related to each other thematically, but can also be viewed as standalone installations. All of the groupings use similar materials such as industrial felt and poplar plywood, highlighted by neon yellow panes of colour. The second room features Hupfield’s newly commissioned installation for the gallery, which stems from an oil painting of a seascape by the artist’s late mother.

In the first room, there are three video works. In the film, It Is Never Just about Sustenance or Pleasure (2016), the artist is seen walking through the desert of Santa Fe wearing handmade mitts and boots (the same ones that are displayed in the gallery). In this desert, there once existed a waterway. The objects themselves are a reference to wetlands, as the mitts are typically worn for snowmobiling and the boots for river fly-fishing. Hupfield replicates these objects in felt to emphasize that they have been adapted to serve a new purpose in the midst of climate change.

It Is Never Just About Sustenance or Pleasure (2016)

(Photo: Tabitha Chan)

The tactility of Hupfield's handmade objects make them feel personal, like they belong to someone and that each one carries a story beyond its functional purpose. The chosen objects are readily recognizable and accessible, both in size and purpose. Objects include: a canoe, a cassette recorder with headphones, a snowsuit, a snowmobile helmet and a light bulb. 

Most visitors will have encountered a similar light bulb fixture in their basement, and have a memory of turning it on by pulling on the metal chain. Hupfield has even replicated the electrical outlet that connects to the light bulb in felt. Hupfield’s felt objects are compelling enough to provide an entry point for visitors to venture their own guesses as to what the work is about and why the artist chose to replicate them in this way.

Handmade replicas of objects in industiral felt

(Photo: Tabitha Chan)

Without having some knowledge of Hupfield’s biographical details, her sculptures and installations in the first room may still be intimidating for viewers who are not comfortable or experienced in looking at contemporary art independently. The second room helps to diffuse this tension, as visitors are able to partake in a shared experience, while learning about Hupfield’s personal heritage and narrative. 

The second room has an intimate and solemn atmosphere. The only light emitted in the room is from two floor-to-ceiling video projections that face one another, and from a small cut out rectangular window that looks out onto the Lake Ontario harbour. There are two objects in the room: Bound with Georgian Bay by Peggy Miller (1974) and Jingle Spiral (2015). Both objects make appearances in the projected performances. 

Small cut out window looking out onto Lake Ontario

(Photo: Tabitha Chan)

This painting below inspired Hupfield’s performance with her siblings, which took place in their hometown of Parry Sound, Ontario on Georgian Bay. In this performance, Hupfield holds the painting facing inwards, as her siblings dance and sing around her to celebrate the memory of their mother. Hupfield and her siblings re-enacted the same performance in the gallery space to ground the work within the exhibition.

In the gallery version of the performance, Hupfield holds the painting facing outwards. These recorded performances are projected one after the other on opposite sides of the gallery. The running time of each performance is 15 minutes – this means that visitors could potentially not even realize that there is a second film if they enter the room early on in the first film.

There are five square boxes configured in a circle in the middle of the room for viewers to sit and watch the performances. This seating arrangement resembles a campfire setting, encouraging viewers to have a community experience. This room is successful in being able to tell a very personal story to the artist, while inviting visitors to collectively partake in it. As visitors look out onto the Lake Ontario harbour, this act gives them the ability to ground their own experience in the exhibition. Their act of looking outwards is a parallel to the oil painting of the Georgian Bay seascape.

Bound with Georgian Bay by Peggy Miller (1974)

(Photo: Tabitha Chan)

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Being in the same room as objects that are seen in the performances gives visitors a way to connect and reflect on Hupfield’s personal narrative. Although the objects are often worn in the performances, the same objects that are displayed in the exhibit do not invite visitors to interact with them. They are remnants of the performance, and in this way, a symbol of past memory.

The two rooms are not binary opposites, but compliment each other through their differences and give viewers the opportunity to form their own interpretations based on what is revealed in the artworks themselves. In trying to understand the relationship between the two rooms, viewers are able to grasp the big idea of the exhibition.

Regardless of visitors’ familiarity or comfort level with contemporary art, the key to understanding this exhibition is time. This exhibit can only be fully appreciated if visitors have time to experience it and to take the initiative to personally reflect on the meaning of the exhibition. To properly engage in the content of the artwork, visitors have to spend time watching and listening to the performances.

The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery uses an interpretive strategy in this exhibition that is quite open ended and largely reliant on the viewers’ own agency to think actively. There is a quality of poetic abstraction with regards to how this exhibition has been curated. Viewers are able to develop their own conclusions, as long as they are willing to embark on their own journey and physically, as well as metaphorically, travel between the two rooms.

“The One Who Keeps On Giving” is open until May 14, 2017 at The Power Plant. The gallery has also made it possible to virtually visit all of their current exhibitions on their website.