TEACHER STRIKES: HOW MUSEUMS ARE RESPONDING

Muse News | Michelle Wright

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Ontario teachers have been without a contract since August 31, 2019, and even after months of negotiations there are few signs of progress. Between the work-to-rule campaigns and the rotating strikes everyone is feeling the impact. Today’s article will take a specific look into the impact this has had in the museum world, and how museums have responded.

Teachers on strike, February 21, 2020, St. Catharines, Ontario. Photo courtesy of Hillary Kerr.

Ontario’s French-language school boards (AEFO) also announced a work-to-rule campaign starting January 23, 2020 followed by The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) on February 3, 2020. This means that teachers will only undertake their scheduled teaching and supervision duties and not participate in any extracurricular actives, including field trips. The lack of school trips to museums has severely impacted several museums that rely on that income for the year. Institutions have reached out to boards not under this campaign, for example the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa reached out to other boards and have been fortunate enough to not suffer substantial losses. Other museums, like Ottawa’s National Arts Centre, are forced to wait it out due to the nature of their programming. Museums are trying to provide extra services, both to help out the community with thousands of children needing care and to generate revenue.

The Ministry of Education agreed to provide parents with a credit of up to $60 when strike actions close schools or school-based childcare centres, however there is a need for parents to provide care for their children during these days. The City of Toronto says that it will not be able to provide alternate childcare options, but some museums across the city are stepping to the plate, some of the museums on the list include, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), the Ontario Science Centre, the McMichael Gallery, the Toronto Zoo, and more. Many of these one-day camps, as they are being called, are also offering early drop-off and/or late pick-up options, making museums even more of a help to parents.

HAPPENING NOW:

Thousands of teachers surround Queen's Park Circle protesting the Ford government during a provincewide strike.

More details here: https://t.co/SX4dJawDqP pic.twitter.com/OQ5pMKcJje

— CTV Toronto (@CTVToronto) February 21, 2020

The Science Centre admits that the program was a bit of a scramble to put together, but they were determined to provide students with a fun-filled science education. Lorrie Ann Smith, the director of education said, “It will be a full day of science adventure and excitement, so we will be doing interactive science experiments, maybe see an IMAX movie and we will go to the planetarium.” It was most-likely a scramble for other museums too, but through their hard work many are going above and beyond to provide an alternative fun and safe learning environment. Afterall, there is a reason these cultural institutions are one of the highest field-trip destinations for schools; museums provide an alternative learning method and have been proven successful tools of education for many students across all boards.

The Ontario Science Centre. Source.

Many other cultural institutions have been able to set up similar programs, but with no end in sight to the teacher strikes, it is hard to say exactly what will happen next.

JOY IN OIL: MAUD LEWIS AT THE MCMICHAEL GALLERY

Exhibition Reviews | Mary Wallace

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Summer Scene with Cows (detail), oil on board. (Photograph Courtesy of Mary Wallace) 

I visited the McMichael Gallery’s Maud Lewis show on Thanksgiving weekend with my parents, this kind of wholesome excursion seems fitting for Lewis’s work. Lewis (1903-1970) is one of Canada’s best known folk artists and female painters and this exhibition features some rarely seen works from private collections in Nova Scotia, mostly small oil paintings as well as some painted shuttlers and Christmas decorations.

Despite the lifelong struggle with rheumatoid arthritis that limited her mobility, Lewis began painting and drawing at an early age, creating Christmas cards and paintings to sell at roadsides. Most of her work was made in the one room house she shared with her husband Everett Lewis in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, which she covered completely in hand-painted designs. Lewis’s life was marked with tragedy, but looking at her paintings you would never know it. The artwork and the exhibition itself radiate joy and enthusiasm with their bright blocks of colour and whimsical subject matter. One of the things I appreciated about this exhibition was that, while it did not shy away from the illness and poverty that affected Lewis’s life, it did not focus on those aspects either. In fact, the gallery’s stated purpose for the exhibition is to present Lewis’s work as objects of aesthetic and artistic value and not merely as artifacts of tragedy.

These works, while unconventional in style, are of certainly of aesthetic value. This snow laden pine tree painted on glass, for example, shows us Lewis’s unique use of thick unblended paint.

Winter Scene, oil on glass. (Photograph Courtesy of Mary Wallace) 

Winter Scene (detail). (Photograph Courtesy of Mary Wallace)

This cow grazing in a summer field conveys wonderful depth despite the flat application of colour.

Untitled (Cow and Apple Blossoms - Bear River), 1950s, oil on board. (Photograph Courtesy of Mary Wallace)

More than just technical skill Lewis’s work creates a unique atmosphere, the feeling that each piece has been created with a loving hand. These paintings have an undeniable sincerity and humour to them, I don’t think I have ever smiled so much at an exhibition.

How could one not smile looking at this frowning cat?

White Cat, 1965/1966, oil on Beaverboard. (Photograph Courtesy of Mary Wallace)

I left this exhibition ready to go home and start painting. Some of you reading this may look at these pictures and think to yourselves “I could do that”, if that’s the case, I encourage you to do so. If Maud Lewis shows us anything it is the uplifting power of bringing something joyful into existence; if you are an I-could-do-that person then by all means get to it, that’s what Maud would have done.

Untitled (Butterflies), early 1960s, oil on board. (Photograph Courtesy of Mary Wallace)

Maud Lewis at the McMichael Gallery runs from June 29, 2019 to January 5, 2020, free with the price of admission (completely free if you bring your OMA card).