UNCOVERING UNION EXHIBITION

Alumni Check-In | Elizabeth Cytko

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People walking outside of Union Station. 2018.
Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Cytko

Writing about the exhibition I created with fellow classmates is bittersweet. The winter semester of 2020 certainly ended abruptly. We did not get to attend many of the exhibition openings of our peers, and sadly have mostly parted ways without the chance to properly say goodbye. I want to acknowledge the hard work of my classmates, and say thank you for providing me with such an amazing time at the Faculty of Information. In the future I look forward to seeing everyone again, and celebrating our successes!

A group of attentive students on the Ottawa Museum trip. November 2019.
Three cheers for my amazing cohort!
Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Cytko

My group, which includes myself, Erika Ilse and Karen Macke, is fortunate — our exhibition is digital. This meant that while we were not able to meet physically, we still had privilege of Skyping and putting together the website Uncovering Union.

The Battle for Union Station.
Courtesy of the City of Toronto Archives, Courtesy of City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 265, Series 1269, Subseries 7, File 2

For those interested in how a digital exhibition is put together, I will highlight some of the steps, so in future you can create one too!

1. Be on the same page as your team. Figure out your themes and what you want your exhibition to say. With Union Station we narrowed our focus to the social history, of the people who have a connection to the place. 
2. Make sure you know who your audience is. This will affect the style of writing and what sort of information you will include. If you will work with an educator, include them from the beginning! This will make the process much smoother!
3. Research! This involved delving deep into Proquest to dig up newspapers, taking out every book possible, and visiting the local archives! I spent most of my time at the City of Toronto archives reading up on my three stories – the archivists there are friendly and very helpful. 
4. Set a word limit and stick to it while writing your articles. 
5. Editing! Editing! Editing! Sometimes it is necessary to cut amazing ideas in order to fit the word count. That's ok! If you have too much information to share you're on the right track.
6. Somewhere around here, or maybe even earlier think about the overall design of the website. Choose your colours, fonts, logos! 
7. Make sure you have all the proper permissions in place for the images and multimedia aspects you plan to use. 
8. User testing! Have some people unfamiliar with the website go through it and make sure everything works. 
9. Launch!

In between all of those steps you are meeting your team at least once a week, and checking in with everyone. Things will unexpectedly crop up (such as a worldwide pandemic) so it’s important to give yourself some extra time.

Union Station food court, 2019.
Photo courtesy of Elizabeth  Cytko

This exhibition has given us the opportunity to peek into Toronto history, and learn how interconnected Union Station is to the very fabric of the city. Uncovering Union centres on nine social histories with stories that vary from soldiers returning from war and new families coming together to civic activists uniting to save the station from destruction. The station itself is not just a terminus for the end of a journey, but the impetus for a new one.

If you miss the hustle and bustle of Toronto life, those moments where you could walk down the street and pass by others whose stories you could barely imagine, I invite you to view our exhibition.

MMSt 2018: EXHIBITION PROJECTS PART II

RESEARCH COLUMN

BY: SERENA YPELAAR

Happy Sunday, readers! It's your friendly neighbourhood Editor-in-Chief again, with another installment of #MMSt2018 exhibition projects for your curious minds. Last weekend you got to hear about the ones that are opening first; this post will follow the same chronological structure and pick up where we left off.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy hearing more about our students' projects!


Temple of Fame: Staging Women's Roles (April 25-June 10, 2018)
Maeghan Jerry, Kara Isozaki, Sarah Kelly

Location: Aurora Museum & Archives, 22 Church Street, Aurora
Opening Reception: April 25th, 2018 5:30 pm - 8:30 pm

A century ago, the women of Aurora produced the Temple of Fame: A Pageant of Famous Women. The play featured historical and fictional female figures vying to be crowned by the Goddess of Fame. Our exhibition explores how the play illuminates the changing roles of women in 1918. Our project is a portion of larger centennial programming, which celebrates local women through a series of community events, including a remount of the play.

1918 production of Temple of Fame. Photo courtesy of the Aurora Museum & Archives.

Redefining Language in African Art Scholarship (April 30, 2018 –) 

Susan Jama

Working at Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collections! Photo courtesy
of Susan Jama. 

Location: Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collection, York University Libraries, Toronto

My digital exhibition, Redefining Language in African Art Scholarship, explores the history of language used to describe African art from colonial to post-colonial era. Redefining Language in African Art Scholarship reveals the transformative shift in African art literature written from the 1900s to 1980s.

Messages from the Mosaic (May 1, 2018 –)
Ellen (Mairead) Murphy, Zhuohua (Nicole) Yang

Location: Canadian Language Museum; messagesfromthemosaic.ca (digital exhibition)

Promotional image for the exhibition. Photo courtesy of

Ellen (Mairead) Murphy.

Our exhibition project is Messages from the Mosaic, a digital exhibition about the languages of Canada. Using text, infographics, and clickable elements, we want to curate a web exhibition that explores the history, trends, and challenges surrounding Canada’s transforming language mosaic. This is a bilingual exhibition (English and French) and will be launched in May 2018.

A Telepathic Book (May 5-15, 2018)

The Broadbent Sisters' Telepathic Book. Photo courtesy of
Broadbent Sisters and Robynne Redgrave, 2017. 

Aurora Cacioppo, Meagan Fillmore 

Location: Black Cat Art Space, 2186 Dundas St W, Toronto
Opening Reception: May 3, 2018, 6 pm (remarks at 7 pm) at Stephen Bulger Gallery, 1356 Dundas St W, Toronto

We are working with the Broadbent Sisters to translate the components of their sculptural photobook into an exhibition for CONTACT Photography Festival. For fourteen days, the artists used meditation to telepathically send and receive images to one another. Afterward, they revealed their photos to one another and found unbelievable connections! Using each day’s images, the artists produced A Telepathic Book, which displays these parallels while promoting meditative practice through its design.

Partners: The Broadbent Sisters

The History of the John Street Roundhouse: 1929 - Present (May 2, 2018 –)
Hannah Monkman, Abebe Mengesha, Alice Norton-Bell

Location: The Toronto Railway Museum, 255 Bremner Boulevard, Stall 17, Toronto
Opening Reception: TBD

Our project is to create a new entryway exhibit in the Toronto Railway Museum, which will set the tone for an upcoming museum-wide redesign. We’re exploring the rich history of Toronto’s rail lands from 1929 to the present day, looking specifically at the John Street Roundhouse where the exhibition will be located. Come learn the story of an area once dedicated to the railway, that’s now a bustling neighbourhood filled with iconic Toronto attractions!

The John Street Roundhouse in 1930. Photo courtesy of
Toronto Public Library Archives.

Anna taping up the exhibition space for Inner Spaces!
Photo courtesy of Kasey Ball. 

Inner Spaces (May 1-31, 2018)Cassy Kist, Anna Kawecka, Kasey Ball

Location: Ontario Science Centre, 770 Don Mills Rd., Toronto
Opening Reception: May 5th, time TBD

Our exhibit provides a brief glimpse under the microscope of research being done across Canada. Displaying images of cellular pathology captured in the lab, we hope to bring awareness to this amazing scientific work.

Collecting Moments: The Photographs of Dr. John E. Ackerman (May 17-June 13, 2018)

Charlotte Gagnier, Sarah Proulx

John E. Ackerman, Men outside Ackerman's Grocery Store ca.
1940s. Ontario Jewish Archives, Blankenstein Family Heritage
Centre, accession 2013-7-13. 

Location: Black Cat Artspace, 2186 Dundas Street West, Toronto
Exhibition Hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 12-7 pm
Opening Reception: May 17, 8-10 pm

Our exhibition consists of photographs reproduced from archival negatives taken by an accomplished amateur photographer, Dr. John E. Ackerman. We are very excited for the opportunity to work with such a rich collection, held by the Ontario Jewish Archives. The best part of fulfilling our role as curators has been looking through this beautiful collection of moments that portray the personal life of Dr. Ackerman as well as life in Toronto in the mid-20th century.

Lost and Found: Rediscovering Fragments of Old Toronto (May 2018-May 2019)

Hannah Hadfield, Tanya McCullough, Leora Bebko

Promotional image for Lost and Found. Photo courtesy of
Leora Bebko, 2018.

Location: Campbell House Museum, 160 Queen St. W., Toronto  

Opening Reception: May 17, 2018 – Panel Discussion from 6-7 pm, Reception from 7-9 pm

Our exhibition will feature six groupings of handcrafted carved stones salvaged by Rosa and Spencer Clark from iconic Toronto buildings in the postwar era. Positioned throughout the Campbell House Museum gardens and juxtaposed against the modern city landscape, we hope that our exhibition will inspire visitors to contemplate the city’s relationship to its heritage and imagine what the city will look like in another 50 years.

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Kudos to all these amazing groups and their fascinating exhibition projects - I'm looking forward to visiting them all. Be sure to check the exhibitions out in person at the openings or beyond!