AUGUST INTERNSHIP CHECK-IN

Internship Check-In | Annie McCarron

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For August I got to chat with Jaime and Hanna, who are both completing their internships remotely from Toronto.


Jaime Meier is completing her internship with a Professor in the Drama and Performing Arts Department within the University of Toronto.


AM: Tell me a bit about the work you are doing for your internship this summer?


Jaime: My internship transitioned from a work study I completed in the fall. The Professor I am working with focuses on 17th century Indigenous and French relations in regards to performance. I have done a lot of work with 17th C. Indigenous accounts and explorers, so it tied in well with my knowledge. The Professor had grant money to go to Paris and do research in the archives for a book. Due to COVID19 we had to make changes to our summer plans so this summer has been finding other things to do. Instead of cancelling the internship my supervisor has found other things for me to do. A lot of my work has been with copyright and image permissions which is something that I wanted to learn about. Having worked in museums before, when they are developing exhibitions I have heard about the challenges around image permissions and rights, and the price of using these images. This summer I have been trying to figure out what images to use, working with different institutions across the world. It has provided me with a case study in copyright and permission in different places. In Canada and the U.S. it can be very expensive, from $60 to well over $100. In France and the U.K. it is more like 5 euro/pounds or no licensing fee at all. It's been interesting to see how they treat academics. In Europe, even though it's commercial, they know it's for use in something academic and for the public so they charge less. They just want a small amount to keep their institution going or a free copy of the book with the images in it when the professor is done and that’s all they expect. I have looked at images from institutions in Toronto that the rights are well over 100 dollars! My supervisor gave me a list of images but I have gotten to help curate the final selection for the book, I help to decide which ones end up in the book and where they go. If it will be a full image, or in black and white or in colour. I have a great supervisor who trusts me.


I have also done a lot of transcription work, taking French documents and writing them up. It's really strange looking at old French from the 17th c. it's really different, it can sometimes look like typos but I just transcribe it as I see it. It's been great also working on my French skills as I have always wanted that experience.


AM: What’s something useful that you have learned from your internship? 

Unicorn of the Red Sea, n.d. Photo courtesy of  Louis Nicolas Life & Work

Jaime: I liked hunting down an image and almost negotiating for the rights. I think this skill will help me with my work with museums. I know copyright can be really stressful and I did not have a lot of experience in it, but now I feel a lot more confident when people ask me what they can do with certain images. Even for my own work, knowing the limits of what you can do with an image is extremely useful.


AM: What is the main focus of the images you are researching?


Jaime: We are doing research looking at Indigenous performance and ceremonies, how it has been recorded by Jesuit missionaries, and how it has influenced European forms of dance. We have been working with members of the Haudenosaunee community to make sure we are not crossing any boundaries since we are talking about their ceremonies and we don't want to include anything that we shouldn't. We ran into this issue where we almost included a sacred ceremony that they did not want included, because it was never supposed to be recorded. So we have taken that out and we are working with the community to see what they want. The last thing we want to do is perpetuate what the Jesuits did and just record anything and everything.


AM: Do you have any  interesting images you have found through through your research you can share with us?

Jaime: Unicorn of the Red Sea by Louis Nicolas. The context is when he was in "New France" the Jesuit Missionary Louis Nicolas recorded hundreds of animals and plants and then threw in a unicorn, and claimed to have seen the unicorn with his own eyes!

AM: Have you encountered any challenges in your work?


Jaime: I find working from home extremely challenging, I like being able to work from a different space or with someone else. It's nice that I have flexible work hours, but it's hard to stay focused at home because you can’t escape other work and chores. I also miss the camaraderie of office spaces. My supervisor is amazing but it would be nice to see people everyday and check-in.

Hanna Schacter is currently doing her summer internship at the Ontario Jewish Archives and the Neuburger Holocaust Education Centre.


AM: Tell me a bit about the work you are doing for your internship this summer?


Hanna: I am working for two institutions, the Ontario Jewish Archives and the Nueberger Holocaust Centre. I have been working on three different projects, one for the Ontario Jewish Archives and two for the Holocaust Centre. I am enrolled in the Collaborative Specialization in Jewish Studies, and as part of those requirements I needed to do my internship at a Jewish Institution. I had solidified an internship in early March, before the pandemic and luckily they were able to keep me as an intern.


For the Ontario Jewish Archives, I am working through creating a digital version of their Stories of Spadina Walking Tour. The tour has been run for over 40 years since the 1970s and tells the Jewish History of Kensington Market and the early settlement of Jewish people in Toronto and the surrounding areas. I started by reviewing the content of the tour, as well as looking at other digital tours to see what was out there and what would work for us. I got to interview the 5 amazing tour guides who have been doing the tours for years. I had a list of questions that I asked to gain their insight. From there I took all that information and thought about the common themes. Then I developed what I think will work on the digital version. Now we are waiting for tour guides to write different sections of the stops and I have been going through the Ontario Jewish Archives and the Toronto Star archives to find pictures to go along with the digital stops. From my work this summer I discovered that I love working with archival collections and looking at old pictures.


For the Neuberger Holocaust Centre I am doing research on young professional programming. They currently have a great young professional program unlike any other institution, and I have been gathering information to see how other places have been handling similar programming during COVID19, and what sort of changes they have made to online.


For my third project I am doing some collection development for the Neuberger Holocaust Centre. They have plans to open a new physical museum in the future, so I have been going through their archives to see what exhibiting content there is that is useful, the interpretive elements available, and what common themes they cover. I am also researching other holocaust museums and what they cover, what pieces and artifacts they use to tell stories. This project has been more on hold because of COVID19, as I have not been able to talk to as many people and conduct the necessary research due to the pandemic.



AM: What are you most excited to accomplish?


Hanna: For my exhibition project in the fall I will actually be able to continue with the walking tour that I am doing and continuing working through it, it will be great because I get to see what it will become. I would love to do some user testing once the website is launched and also make some educational resources to go along with the tour. I have really enjoyed doing the research for it and finding the archival materials, I get really fascinated looking at old photos and I love Kensington Market too. It is a place that I have grown up going and now get to learn about the Jewish history of it too. It has been a home to so many different commutes and still is.



AM: Any advice for future people in your position?


Hanna: For anyone taking on a remote internship, I would say communicate — a lot. I regret not communicating more at certain times. I think also that you should never be afraid to ask for help! I have also learned more technical stuff about archives, and I have become a better researcher throughout this internship. I have had an amazing supervisor who is an archivist at the OJA. We have weekly calls checking in and seeing where I am at, she has been very helpful especially if I am unsure if something is useful or not, I will present to her and she will give me great feedback about my work.


AM: What skills have you employed from classwork?


Hanna: I took the User Experience for Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museum course and it is always in the back of my mind now, whenever I do anything for the public. Even at the start, doing research about different walking tours I am constantly thinking about the users, what are their needs, ease of use, site accessibility issues. I also took the Public Programming and Education course, where we learned about tours and the different elements to set up a tour. Certain questions to keep in mind: what are we learning here? What is our theme? These helped guide my research for the walking tours.


AM: Any interesting stories from the walking tours you would like to share? 

Augusta Fruit Market, August 1956.

 Ontario Jewish Archives, accession 2006-1-3

Hanna: The tour guides told me that everyone has a fish in the bath story. Before Shabbat people would buy fish and they didn’t have anywhere to keep it but their bathtub. Someone had a story where they were about to hop in the bath and there was a fish. I liked this story because I think it conveys the hustle and bustle of how Kensington Market is. Not sure how true the story is but it is something that has been passed along.

AM: What interesting facts have you learned?


Hanna: I have learned some interesting institutional history about organizations that the Jewish Community have established that still live on. On Cecil Street the Jewish old folks home was established in the early 1900s, which is now Baycrest Centre. Places have moved out of the Kensington Market area but are still going strong and serving the community. I have always felt that being Jewish you care for your community, and that was so true with everyone coming here to Toronto, and establishing themselves, and helping each other when they got here. These stories of care and serving the community are well documented within the archives.

RE-LENSING THE CITY: ALUMNI CHECK-IN WITH BRUCE BEATON

 Alumni Check-In | Elizabeth Cytko

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Bruce Beaton.
Photo courtesy of Bruce Beaton.

Bruce Beaton is an Acting Museum Program Officer with the City of Toronto. Beaton is a theatre professional who graduated from the Master of Museum studies in 2013. He is a co-creator and presenter of Hands On Inquiry, where he visits high school classrooms with a suitcase of artefacts, and builds a narrative with students about The Great War. Beaton volunteers on the Board of Directors for the Kensington Market Historical Society.

What inspired you to move from theatre to museums?

My work in theatre was becoming more heritage-based. One of the prime drivers that I was running into again and again was the moment where you go, “Wow, that happened here” and this is not a theatrical conceit. It's an immediate response to something that happened. Theatre can do this, but it does it through sort of a make-believe lens. I just found it more interesting to go onto Spadina with a bunch of people rather than to write a play about it and perform it in the theatre.

There's an immediacy of experience that museums can wonderfully offer visitors. There's a kind of a jolt that occurs when you're there where something actually happened. That's one of the reasons that I crossed over. My museum work is basic storytelling where place is the “artefact” that helps tell a story rather than the way a script scaffolds and tells a story.

Everyone's got their own little sort of historical mental map. What is interesting is when you can take a group of people through a re-lensing experience where they have maybe a few ideas about something but you re-lense an urban landscape in a way that maybe they didn't know. That's part of the fun thing about what we do. We facilitate discovery.

How is heritage presentation incorporated into your work with the Kensington Market Historical Society?

There's kind of a continual movement in Toronto to just knock stuff down and try and start again. I live in Kensington Market. There was a big report that happened in the 1960s that suggested that city council should just knock it all down and start again, but luckily that didn't happen.

I think people come to Kensington because it doesn't work by design. You couldn't design a Kensington Market today. It works by accident and I think that people are hungry for that. People want to be in landscapes that aren't designed by people who want them to shop. Compare Kensington Market to the Eaton Centre, for instance. The Eaton Centre is designed for a very specific reason. Kensington Market has a ramshackle, anarchic quality that is something people hunger for. And sharing or revealing the history of the site directly relates to the experience of the contemporary street-scape.

How do you measure the success of a place like Kensington? Well, you can measure it by the amount of money that goes into somebody's pocket after they built a new multi-storied building here; or you can measure it by people's experience. I think that often the actual measurement of someone's visceral responsive experience is something that doesn't have a lot of swing when it comes to moving big wheels in a big city.

Cities are complex terrains, and urban memory is short. I'm interested in expanding and sharing urban memory, the memory of a city, the memory of a house, the memory of an urban landscape.

What inspired you to fit graffiti into a heritage interpretation of Evergreen Brickworks?

This was my final exhibition project while I was doing the MMSt program. I was familiar with the site from working with MOVE Expo and doing my internship there. Graffiti is curious. It's ephemeral. It's unknown to outsiders. And the graffiti at the Brickworks is the only artifact for about 20 years of this history of that site. If you're going to tell the whole history of the site, you can tell the brick making portion of its history, you can tell the current environmental charity chapter of the site but there's 20 years there when the site was abandoned, and without an artifact to share, how do you tell that story?

My co-creator Shannon Todd and myself, thought this might be an interesting way to share that chapter of the history of the site. It's vibrant and it’s everywhere down there. Our exhibit included an introduction to graffiti, a basic Graffiti 101 - what is a tag? What is the difference between graffiti and street art? Who worked the walls here? We included information about how the site changed and how it was used by graffiti artists as a blank canvas and why it's now preserved. There's heritage designation of that graffiti, the abandoned buildings there provided a safe space for graffiti artists to do their stuff. The place is sheltered, there aren't a lot of police around, and they could do what they wanted. There were also a lot of parties down there and there was a pig roast at one point. It was sort of like an abandoned urban playground, a dangerous but blank canvas.

What have been some of the greatest challenges in your career?

At Mackenzie House Museum we present a variety of programs about the lives of Black Victorians. I am an older white male, and it is challenging, rightfully so, for me to speak of black history within the city. How do I speak about black lives in 1840 here? The only way that that I believe this can work for me is to do my homework. When you're talking about what it was like here for a particular community in the 1840s even though you're not part of that community, even though you’re not from the 1840s, even though I have no way to experience the systemic oppression that has been foisted upon the community, being able to speak of that, in front of the community, is a challenge and an honour. There are risks associated with the telling difficult history and challenging history within a museum setting. Those risks I think are worth it. I think we have to speak about those difficult histories. I also have to be prepared to get it wrong. I am continually learning and I am grateful to have the opportunity to share what I have learnt with the curious publics that visit the museums where I work.

What advice can you give to museum professionals entering the field?

I would say that any involvement in any community organization is something that you should seriously consider. This can't just be about what you will get for your résumé from being involved. It has to be something that you are truly devoted to and something that you will commit some time to. Community involvement is something that will serve you very well, in terms of your own curiosity and your own sense of giving something back to whatever organization you volunteer with. There are certain skills that you have coming out of the MMSt program that community organizations can certainly benefit from.

FINDING FOODWAYS, PART III.

Research Column | Casarina Hocevar

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For the last installation of this research column, I would like to touch upon some of the challenges of historical research. The challenges of researching can be both frustrating and thrilling. For example, the availability of information may have us swinging between an overabundance of materials to absolute dead ends, leaving the research process inconsistent and difficult. This urges us, as researchers, to be careful notetakers, well organized and creative in how we go about our next avenue of inquiry. But as research comes together like pieces in a puzzle, it can lead to satisfying and exciting results, assuring us that the effort was worth it all along. The following will illustrate an example of this process from my research for Storefront Stories.

Missing Percy’s

As part of Storefront Stories, we have 9 participating businesses in Kensington Market that will feature a poster with information of a historical Jewish-owned storefront once located at their same address, with an additional 11 businesses featured online. Dividing the 20 businesses between myself and my teammates, we each wrote the narratives to a selection of storefronts. Some storefronts focus on stories of immigration, others on the success of the business, and others on more intimate family details. Our narratives have largely been informed by materials available at the Ontario Jewish Archives (OJA), but have also been supplemented by additional research from the field of Jewish Studies, history and through resources available at the City of Toronto Archives and various media outlets. Our goal is to illuminate a concise and engaging history of these storefronts to the best our ability, while respecting the limitations of available materials. 

One of the storefronts I was paired with is located at 234 Augusta Ave., where today Dolce Gelato stands. Initially, the photograph I was working with was an image of “Percy’s Fruit” - a Jewish grocery shop from mid-century Kensington Market. In the archive, the image was dated from 1959. As I began researching its history, I only found dead ends - there never seemed to be any trace of a Percy’s Fruit at 234 Augusta Ave in 1959. Shifting strategies, I searched through city directories to see if the image was perhaps incorrectly dated.

Image used with permission from the Ontario Jewish Archives: Percy's Fruit Market, Augusta Avenue and Nassau Street, 16 May 1959. Ontario Jewish Archives, Blankenstein Family Heritage Centre, fonds 18, series 2, item 2.

What I found throughout the directories were listings for different shops at 234 Augusta Ave, not Percy's Fruit. From the earliest entry in the directory until the early 1930s, there were butcher shops at 234 Augusta Ave. Then in the late 30s, Joe’s Fruit Market appears in that exact location, and remains listed for several decades. According to the city directory records, which are available through the Toronto Public Library, the information accompanying the archival image of Percy’s Fruit (e.g. date/location) did not match with the information in the directories, prompting me to reconsider whether the information I had for Percy's was even correct.

Comparing Images

Returning to the image of Percy’s Fruit, I enlarged the image and began noting the structure of the building: the roof’s slant, the location of the windows, any trimmings, etc. Then I googled 234 Augusta Ave., opened up Google Street View and compared the contemporary building to that of Percy’s. They were not the same building. Is it possible that in the 60 years that passed between this photograph of Percy’s Fruit and Dolce Gelato, the building may have changed? -Sure! However, considering there was no mention of Percy's Fruit at 234 Augusta Ave. in the city directories, I was doubtful this image belonged.

Curious, I searched for images of Joe’s Fruit Market. I was able to locate a couple within the City of Toronto Archives, whose building looked very similar to that of today’s Dolce Gelato. Noting that, I returned to the 1959 City Directory to see if a Percy’s Fruit was located elsewhere in Kensington Market. I was able to find a Percy’s Fruit listed nearby 234 Augusta Ave., with Joe’s Fruit Market at 234. Following that, I returned to the map of Kensington and began comparing the building that is listed in the 1959 directory for Percy’s to the image I had of the grocery shop. Save for a few modern updates, the two buildings - that featured on Google Maps and that of the archival image - were the same.

Conclusions

In short, after several winding research paths, I assumed the following:

• - 234 Augusta Ave. had previously been home to multiple Jewish butcher shops in its earliest days
• - In the late 1930s, Joe’s Fruit Market moved into 234 Augusta, where it remained until the 1970s
• - Percy’s Fruit Market was located nearby 234 Augusta

After some consultation with my teammates and with OJA, we concluded that my research was likely correct, and unfortunately, Percy’s Fruit had been incorrectly labelled. For the purposes of our exhibition, we decided to discard the image of Percy’s for the poster, but inquired further into the story of Joe’s Fruit Market. Thankfully - and still with a couple more archival hiccups - we were able to provide a narrative of Joe’s Fruit Market, that will be featured on the exhibition poster at 234 Augusta Ave. this May.

This nugget of research has a bittersweet end. In many ways, it was satisfying as it still led me to a story I can share through the exhibition. However, I am disappointed I was never able to locate more information about Percy’s Fruit. While I found the correct address and its approximate dates of operation, the story behind the grocery shop remains largely a mystery. As researchers and museum practitioners, there are moments we need to recognize when to close one door, so we can open another: in this case, the door to Percy’s Fruit closed, while another to Joe’s Fruit Market was opened.

FINDING FOODWAYS, PART II.

Research Column | Casarina Hocevar

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In my last post, I introduced my upcoming exhibition project, Storefront Stories, and shared a bit about my research into the historical Jewish foodways of Kensington Market. In today’s post, we shall delve into a small tidbit from the research.

Communal Ovens

Perhaps one of my favourite things I have learned in researching Kensington’s Jewish history is a small anecdote about the use of communal ovens. Throughout the 19th and early 20th century, it was common practice in the shtetlekh - villages - of Eastern Europe to use communal ovens to prepare meals for Sabbath. One of my favourite historians of Jewish foodways, Hasia Diner, writes eloquently about the importance of food and food preparation in Jewish life, especially celebratory meals:

The Jewish calendar moved from holiday to holiday, from Sabbath to the six days of the work week, from one life cycle to another, along a food trajectory … The Sabbath meals, three of them…stood out from the weekly food cycle for their richness and elaborateness. …Memoirs of Jewish life in eastern Europe recalled chicken soup, roasted meat, gefillte fish, tcholent (a mixture of beans, meats, potatoes, other vegetables) cooked long and slow, usually in communal ovens, and cakes and fruits, as the embodiment of Jewish family and communal life. - Hasia Diner, Hungering for America, 155 - 156.

As noted in Diner’s quote, meals like tcholent were cooked in a communal oven. Tcholent, similar to a slow-simmering stew, often was cooked overnight to be ready for the lunch/midday meal during Sabbath.

While searching for photographs and information about family businesses in Kensington Market for the exhibition, our team came across the accession file to the Lottman family who ran a bakery at 172 Baldwin St from the 1920s to '40s (and later at 181 Baldwin St. until 1984). In this file there is a note that reads, “[the bakery] had a brick oven and on Friday nights women would bring their pots to keep the chollent warm for the Sa[b]bath.” This short and sweet note indicates to us continuity in Jewish foodways from Eastern Europe shtetlekh to the little Jewish Market in early Toronto: the community followed a weekly routine of observing Sabbath, and to facilitate this, one of the neighbourhood bakeries shared their oven for communal cooking.

Unfortunately, at this stage of our research, we have little evidence or information about whether other bakeries in the market also participated in this practice or which women (and families) would have visited the Lottman bakery to leave their chollent overnight. Nonetheless, small moments like this help illustrate to us some aspect of the market’s foodways: weekly routines (preparing for the Sabbath meals), types of food (tcholent/chollent), division of labour (communal and gendered) and the geography (Lottman’s as a site of communal food production).

A glimpse into the past

Below are two family images of the Lottman's bakery at 172 Baldwin St. In the first: the three women are identified as Sandy Shabinsky, Katie Lottman Grossman, Ruth Berman, in the second: Bella Tichberg and her cousin Henry. Katie Lottman Grossman was Sam Lottman's daughter, who was one of the founders and owners of the bakery, and Bella Tichberg is one of his granddaughters. Later family photos include interior shots from the Lottman bakery and their more industrial kitchen; unfortunately, though, we have no known existing photographs of the original Lottman oven used for communal cooking.

The Lottman family's bakery is one of the businesses to be featured in Storefront Stories.

Permission to use from the Ontario Jewish Archives: “Lottman family,” Ontario Jewish Archives, North York, ON. Accession number: 2013-11-2.

Permission to use from the Ontario Jewish Archives: “Lottman family,” Ontario Jewish Archives, North York, ON. Accession number: 2013-11-2.

FINDING FOODWAYS, PART I.

Research Column | Casarina Hocevar

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This semester, I am taking over Musings’ Research Column to share a bit about my personal research and upcoming exhibition project. Ideally, this column will touch upon both the exciting and woeful moments of historical research - from archival photos to tricky translations and many winding paths in-between...and of course, give some insight into a Museum Studies student’s research!

A peek into an archival box from the Ontario Jewish Archives. Photo courtesy of Casarina Hocevar.

Exhibition Project/Research Scope

Last semester, I delved into two intersecting projects. The first is my MMSt exhibition project, Storefront Stories, co-curated with fellow Museum Studies candidates Amy, Evelyn, and Erica, for the Ontario Jewish Archives (OJA). Our project investigates and shares Kensington Market’s Jewish history through the lens of archival storefront photographs. Through the creation of our poster exhibition and website, we aim to explore Jewish life in the Market during the early 20th Century. The exhibition will use the photographs as a springboard into themes about the market’s culture, including intellectual and political life, Jewish foodways, immigration, trade and commerce, and the neighbourhood’s community.

View this post on Instagram

Welcome to the instagram of Ontario Jewish Archives! Over the next couple of months, University of Toronto Museum Studies students, Casarina, Amy, Erica and Evelyn will be posting about the upcoming OJA exhibition, "Storefront Stories." . Since October, we've been busy planning, designing and researching our exhibition about Kensington Market's early Jewish history. The exhibit intends to feature approximately 12 posters with information about the unique stories of past Kensington businesses and Jewish life. . We're delighted to start the next stage of our project this week. We'll be heading into the market to connect with business owners as potential participants in the exhibition. Participating businesses will showcase a poster featuring a photo of their historic storefront and story. . . . Continue to follow us here for exhibition updates and developments. ✨

A post shared by Ontario Jewish Archives (@ontariojewisharchives) on Jan 15, 2019 at 10:26am PST

The second project is a historical investigation of Jewish foodways in Kensington Market. This project began with a research proposal for a history course I took last semester, “The History of Food and Drink,” and has since evolved into an ongoing personal project as a way to bolster my knowledge about Kensington Market, (im)migrant foodways, and local Jewish history. (I will also be sharing some of this research at the upcoming McGill-Queen’s Graduate History Conference in March.) Through compiling, reading and interpreting a combination of primary and secondary sources, I have been slowly noting the early foodways of the Market. Primary sources used are those normally accessed at the OJA or City of Toronto Archives, such as photographs, menus, business directories, newspaper clippings, etc. While the secondary sources available come from a range of fields, including Jewish studies, food studies, geography, diaspora studies, and history.

So...why - and what are - foodways?

While Storefront Stories is not an exhibition about Kensington Market’s Jewish foodways per se, my interest and pursuit of foodways research undeniably connects to the exhibition’s broad themes. Food studies (and more specifically for me, food history) aims to understand how food, and food practices, impacts our lives. This can include both our intimate relationships with food (e.g. how we conceptualize our identities and those of others through food practices) to more public and global food topics, such as the role of restaurants in gentrification, or say the commodification and trade of food items - coffee beans, wheat, or bananas.

“Foodways” refers to more specific practices associated with people in a given place and/or period (e.g. Japanese foodways in the 19th Century, or the foodways of British colonists in India, or Palestinian foodways in the diaspora). So, in the context of my research, by focusing upon Jewish foodways in Kensington Market, I can better contextualize a range of information, including: the popularity of certain types of establishments (e.g. kosher delis), the sensory experience of the Market (what would one smell or taste or hear throughout the Market in the early 20th Century?), and, the role of gender in private and public spaces (who prepared, purchased, and served food goods in the neighbourhood?)... all of which helps to better inform us about life in early Kensington Market.

As the semester progresses, keep your eye out for future posts in this series which will highlight some of my research developments!

FAIRLAND FUNHOUSE: ART MAZE COMING TO KENSINGTON MARKET

MUSE NEWS

BY: AMY INTRATOR

This month, Toronto received news that an immersive art experience is coming to Kensington Market. The Fairland Funhouse, an “interactive two-storey adventure world," will be hosted at the former site of Zimmerman's Fairland grocery store in Kensington Market. The fun-house experience will run from August to Halloween. What exactly is the experience? The details are still emerging, but it is already clear that the Funhouse will offer a unique mixture of visual arts and music in an environment that encourages exploration and play.

 

Exterior image of the former Zimmerman's Fairland store in Kensington Market. Source.

Collaboration in the Spotlight

While all exhibits depend on collaboration, at the Funhouse, collaboration takes center stage. After entering the building’s “hotel lobby” visitors will experience the art maze in the basement. The maze is made up of six rooms, and each room features a collaboration between visual artists and musicians. The visual artists were tasked with creating an immersive art experience based on the aesthetic of their musical counterpart. Some of the pairings include the band The Beaches with the artistic duo Broadbent Sisters (you may recognize this sister duo from their previous exhibit A Telepathic Book curated by MMSt grad Aurora Cacioppo); and the Canadian rapper Jazz Cartier with mixed-media artist Casey Watson. Each room is a product of artistic collaboration, and each space is a unique visualization of an auditory experience.

In @thetorontostar today! Finally able to announce our super exciting collab with @umusic and @thebeachesband in an epic art funhouse in Kensington Market this summer, @fairlandfunhouse. Alongside an incredible lineup of artists, we're transforming an old grocery store into an trippy art maze. Link in bio for article & details! ✨ . . . #wip #fairlandfunhouse #BroadbentSisters #artpiece #performace #canart #connection #art #design #instagood #clearingspaces #beauty #inspire #travel #artofvisuals #wondermore #wanderlust #visualsofearth #discoverearth #earthofficial #shotzdelight #magic #telepathy #sisters #sculpture #art #installationart

A post shared by Broadbent Sisters (@broadbentsisters) on Jul 4, 2018 at 5:25am PDT

The Fairland Funhouse is the product of a collaboration between Mondo Forma, a creative collective, and Universal Music Canada. The Funhouse creators are clear that this space is meant to create an environment that invites play and provokes imagination. Beyond the trippy art maze, the space will also host musical programs, another indication that the Funhouse aims to provide a multi-sensory, engaging environment.


Interactive and Site-Specific

The Funhouse intends to engage the visitors in both the real space and imagined dimensions. While an abandoned grocery store may seem like an odd space for this interactive art experience, the creators are playing up the history of the store and the surrounding Market. Back in the day, the store was famous for hosting rooftop concerts during Pedestrian Sundays, and this legacy of art and community melds perfectly with the Funhouse’s mission. The Funhouse also situates itself in the larger community by embracing the multiculturalism and creativity abundant in Kensington Market. The creators are trying to highlight the potential of empty spaces in the city, so the Funhouse may be inviting visitors to escape reality, but the experience is also rooted in our diverse and creative city.

Rumour has it that if you stare long enough you'll see Drake. #fairlandfunhouse

A post shared by Fairland Funhouse (@fairlandfunhouse) on Jul 3, 2018 at 6:00pm PDT

The Funhouse embraces its Toronto roots, but it also imagines a new, otherworldly dimension. The Funhouse website invites visitors to an “inter-dimensional hotel” where wormholes and an alternate universe await. The new experience in an old building depends on the visitor to activate this reimagined space. The Funhouse advertises the experience as “art that you can be IN.” The experience will also incorporate augmented reality through an app that visitors can use to experience digital art layered on top of the physical art.


Part of a Larger Movement

The Fairland Funhouse promises a unique experience, but the art maze is part of a growing trend of immersive art experiences. Over the last few years, exhibits and pop-ups have sprung up offering engaging experiences that defy exhibition conventions. From the Rain Room that invited visitors to walk through a reality-defying field of falling water, to Meow Wolf, these spectacular, large-scale, immersive exhibits are on the rise.

This new wave of immersive art is not without its critics. Many have suggested that these exhibits cater to millennial audiences by building an exhibit that promises a great photo-op above all else. Although the Funhouse has yet to open, I appreciate that the creators are embracing their millennial audience and blurring the line between art and entertainment. While other exhibits are criticized for pandering to selfie culture, the Funhouse builds digital engagement into the experience through the VR component. While other exhibits are accused of replicating an Instagram aesthetic, the Funhouse embraces Instagram as a source of aesthetic inspiration and a primary means of marketing.

It's as if @crucamara can read our #jungalow obsessed minds 🌴 #fairlandfunhouse 📸 @crucamara

A post shared by Fairland Funhouse (@fairlandfunhouse) on Jun 13, 2018 at 8:55am PDT

We will have to wait until August to see what the Fairland Funhouse holds, but I am excited to witness a once-empty store as a site of multi-disciplinary artistic collaboration.

CELEBRATING CANADA, FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA

WHAT'S HAPPENING WEDNESDAYS

BY: KELLY MANIKOTH

Hello everyone and welcome to the special Canadian edition of What’s Happening Wednesdays! July is full of celebrations in honour of Canada’s 150th year of Confederation, and this article will take us from Southern Ontario to the West Coast, highlighting different ways Canadians are commemorating this important anniversary.

Many of our fellow classmates are completing internships across the country, and this month’s column will feature events in cities such as Hamilton, where Hannah Hadfield (Hamilton Civic Museums) and Aurora Cacioppo (Art Gallery of Hamilton) are completing internships, Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories, where Serena Ypelaar and Connor Kurtz are interning (Northern Life Museum), London, Ontario, where Meagan Fillmore and Jessica Baptista are interns (Museum London), the township of Woodstock, Ontario, where Sarah MacDonald is currently interning (Woodstock Art Gallery), Ottawa, where Charlotte Gagnier (Canadian Photography Institute) is completing an internship, and Vancouver, where Alexis Moline (Museum of Vancouver) is an intern!

1. Celebrate Heritage in Hamilton with the Parade of Sails!

The Parade of the Tall Ships! Source.

Celebrate Canada’s heritage by viewing The Tall Ship Parade of Sails in Hamilton. Eleven tall ships, which are traditionally rigged vessels, from Canada, the States, and Europe will make their way down Hamilton’s harbour on Friday afternoon, eventually docking at Pier 8. Some of the stars of the show will include the Pathfinder, a Canadian ship built in 1963 and the first ship built for Toronto Brigantine Inc., and Black Jack, a Scottish team tug from the turn of the twentieth century! There will be free deck tours, tickets for harbour cruises on Empire Sandy, food vendors and music on the Waterfront stage. The Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum’s Avro Lancaster will also conduct multiple fly-overs of the Waterfront on July 1! For more information, visit www.hamilton.ca

When: Friday, June 30: The Parade of Sail takes places from 2pm – 4pm, with music performances from 6pm – 10 pm
Saturday, July 1 – Aviation show takes place between 11:30am – 2:30 pm. Music performances on the Waterfront Stage take place from 6pm – 10 pm.

Where: Pier 8, 57 Discovery Drive, Hamilton, Ontario

Cost: Free! 

2. Northern Life Museum and Cultural Centre Canada Day Parade in the Northwest Territories 

The Radium King at its launch in 1937. Source.

The Northern Life Museum and Cultural Centre is taking part in Fort Smith’s Canada Day Parade with their very own float! The float is themed after the Radium King, a giant heritage ship that is preserved on the museum grounds. The Radium King is the last survivor of a fleet of 12 boats in the Radium Line. Created in 1937 by the Northern Transportation Company, it was one of the first diesel powered steel tugboats to tow barges on the Mackenzie River. The ship serves as a landmark for the town of Fort Smith and the museum is actively trying to preserve it. The Radium King float is one of the ways the Northern Life Museum is giving the preservation project exposure. The Fort Smith Canada Day parade also features music, local food vendors, and ends off with a fish fry! For more information on the Save Our King project, click here and for details on the parade, visit www.fortsmith.ca

When: Saturday, July 1st, Parade Marshalling at 11:00 am, Parade Starts at 11:30 am
Ceremony at Riverside Park - 12:30 pm
Water Park, Market and Music at Riverside Park - 1- 4 pm
Fish Fry at Riverside Park - 2 pm

Where: Riverside Park, Fort Smith, Northwest Territories

Cost: Free!

3. Museum London’s ‘Cottage Staycation’

Visitors explore the Witness Blanket exhibition at Museum London! Source.

If you were looking to escape the heat during Canada Day celebrations, Museum London has the perfect alternative to outdoor events. Explore their new exhibition Canada and London: 150 Years of Growing Together and play with an over-sized beach ball, lounge in Muskoka chairs, and listen to the 'sounds of Canada'. There will also be an art hunt where participants can earn maple sugar cookies and contribute to an interactive mural which invites visitors to share moments that capture London’s history! For more information, visit www.museumlondon.ca

Where: Museum London
421 Ridout Street North
London, Ontario

When: Saturday July 1st and Sunday, July 2nd, 11am – 5pm

Cost: Admission to the museum is through personal donation

4. The National Gallery – Our Masterpieces, Our Stories

Fireworks at the gallery. Source.

If you are lucky enough to be in the nation’s capital for Canada Day, visiting the National Gallery of Canada is a must! The Gallery is offering free admission and hosting plenty of fun, family-friendly activities throughout the day, such as scavenger hunts and arts & crafts stations. Their major exhibition, Our Masterpieces, Our Stories, features nearly 1,000 works of art that express the stories and legends which shaped our land. The highlight of the exhibition is the new Canadian and Indigenous Galleries, which was unveiled on June 15th, 2017. For more information, visit www.gallery.ca

Where: National Gallery of Canada
Scotiabank Great Hall
380 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, Ontario

When: Saturday, July 1, 2017, 9:30 am to 4:00 pm, Our Masterpieces, Our Stories runs from Thursday, June 15, 2017 to Monday, September 4, 2017

Cost: Free on Canada Day! Regular Admission: $15, $7 for students with valid student ID.

5. 2017 Visual Elements 59: Annual Juried Exhibition - Woodstock Art Gallery

Woodstock Art Gallery. Source.

The Woodstock Art Gallery’s Visual Elements 59: Annual Juried Exhibition celebrates the diversity and talent of the residents in Oxford County. In 1959, a group of Woodstock citizens organized a call for art which had an overwhelmingly popular response. The highly successful exhibition led to the formation of the Oxford County for Art Association, an organization that paved the way for the creation of the Woodstock Art Gallery. The Gallery carries on the tradition of an open call for art through an annual juried exhibition. This is the exhibition's 59th year, and the jury is made up of curator, Corinna Ghaznavi, and artists, Gary Evans and Michael Hunter.

When: Opening Reception: July 19, 2017,  5pm - 7pm
Exhibition Dates: July 15 — September 23, 2017

Where: Woodstock Art Gallery, 449 Dundas St, Woodstock, Ontario

Cost: Free!

6. Kensington Krawl Food Tour

Source.

If you’re in Toronto for the summer, celebrate the diverse and multicultural cuisine the city has to offer by attending the Kensington Krawl Food Tour. Learn about the history and heritage of one of Toronto’s most unique and eclectic neighbourhoods while sampling a variety of food and drinks. Attendees are also able to meet the local shopkeepers and chefs. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit savourtoronto.com

Where: Meeting place near Baldwin & Spadina (exact location given when registered)

When: Friday, July 14th and Saturday, July 15th, 2017, 11:30am – 3:00 pm

Cost: $65.00 + taxes which includes 8 food and drink tastings.

7. Honda’s Celebration of Light in Vancouver

Source.

Explore Canada's western coast and see the Vancouver for the 27th Annual Celebration of Lights, the largest international fireworks competition in the world! Taking place at the waterfront around English Bay and Burrard Inlet, a spectacular display of fireworks is launched up above the mountains and the Vancouver skyline. The evening begins with a free music festival at Sunset Beach, LG 104.3’s Shorefest, which features an entirely Canadian lineup. Countries participating in the competition are Japan, the United Kingdom, and Canada. For more information visit www.hondacelebrationoflight.com

Where: English Bay, Vancouver, Canada

When: Saturday, July 29, 2017 - Japan
Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - United Kingdom
Saturday, August 5, 2017 – Canada
The concert starts in the afternoon, and the fireworks begin at 10 pm on each day.

Cost: Free! You can also reserve VIP sections on the beach for $49.99 + tax. These areas range from all-ages bleacher stands to private cabanas that serve appetizers and drinks.

Whether you’re in a small community or reside in the city, Canada Day celebrations are bigger and better than ever. From commemorating the country’s Indigenous origins, to our Francophone heritage and our diverse and multicultural identity, I hope these events help you make the most of your Canada 150 experience! To see more events in cities near you, check out Passport 2017. Happy Canada Day, everyone!

Canadian Puppy Pride! Source.