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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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I'm a clod. lumpen. slow. myopic. I never remember to spellcheck, but worse, I don't remember to GOOGLE! And that's a problem if you are as thick as me, cause if you don't google you can go around whining that Toronto's best art journalist RM Vaughan's National Post column isn't available online when in fact it IS online and also he wrote something nice about you in it about a million years ago and you never knew. uuuuuuh. y'all can pull the feeding tube whenever you want.
thanks (again!) to Simpleposie for dragging me into the loop.
Simpleposie has posted details on the Canada Council's next Toronto "VISUAL ARTS INFORMATION SESSION ON THE NEW VISUAL ARTS PROGRAM FOR VISUAL ARTISTS". Gotta love them all caps. The council has to use 'em cause they come from the CAPital city of Canada! Uh, anyhow. The event is May 25th.
Last night I took part in a focus group at the Art Gallery of Ontario. They are working on a re-branding strategy to go with the big Gehry-induced physical transformation in 2008. They've invited various stakeholders to give input. My group was "artists." There's another "artists" group on Wednesday. In attendance last night were 8 artists, an outside facilitator, and Arlene Madell, the director of marketing and communications. Of the artists, 7 were white females between 35-45. Pretty well everyone in the group knew each other really well. As a bunch, we were kind of mean and negative. I hope the feedback was helpful, it was definitely impassioned and honest. Here are my favourites of the more positive, action-oriented suggestions that came up:
- Give more power and freedom to young curators with vision and excitement for contemporary art. We named names. I dunno if I should do that here. It seems like it would be a breach of confidence. If I change my mind I'll make an update.
- Host regular get-togethers for curators and programmers from galleries across Ontario, including artist-run centres, private galleries and public galleries, to compare notes about specifically what projects are upcoming and explore ways to work together.
- Expand on the good work that the education and outreach department is doing, particularly Teens Behind the Scenes and any like programs.
- Open an AGO bar and hold free weekly events there.
- Get excited about showcasing contemporary Canadian art to local, regional and international audiences, and tour contemporary shows around the country.
- De-accession works from the collection which are not relevant to current goals for the institution and channel that money into contemporary programming.
- Shed the small-time Upper Canadian museological stuffiness for some genuine, committed engagement with current Canadian art.
The City of Toronto is shooting itself in the foot again with a plan to penalise property owners for allowing graffiti to remain on their walls. Maybe city council didn't notice that all those other fun destination cities in the world have a bunch of cool art on their buildings? I guess the plan is to make sure that there's no free culture around for tourists and hipsters from out of town to soak in, thereby driving them onto public squares awash with the ambient glow of corporate billboards.
NOW magazine did a good piece (via TPSC) on the issue last week. I was apalled/amused at this non-savvy quote from Dennis Reid, chief curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario:
It sickens me when I see people spray-painting on old stone buildings. What the hell are they thinking? I can't imagine the citizenry wouldn't want to clean up the mess as much as we can, but at the same time, there are those occasional pieces that are inspired and we should be pausing over.NB: there's a public forum on what makes a beautiful city next week. details here.