2007 Exhibition Archives
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February 10 to May 13, 2007
FRAMED: The Art of the Portrait
Curated by Tobi Bruce, Patrick Shaw Cable and Sara Knelman
The AGH banner exhibition for Winter 2007, FRAMED: The Art of the Portrait looks at the innovative transformations of the age-old artistic genre of portraiture.
Embracing photography, painting, sculpture, prints, drawings and other media, the exhibition highlights the breadth of the AGH’s portrait holdings, complemented by select loans from other institutions and individuals. The over 100 works displayed originate from diverse areas and date from the 16th century to the present day and feature exotic princesses and Hollywood stars, mythological figures and royalty, self-portraits and unknown sitters.
Viewers will be able to explore the power of the portrait through the works of such diverse artists as Rembrandt van Rijn, Marcel Duchamp, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Robert Harris, Walter Sickert, Leonard Baskin, Clarence Sinclair Bull and Elizabeth Holbrooke. The exhibition will also highlight works by such contemporary artists as Andy Warhol, Barbara Astman, Antonio Saura, Arnaud Maggs, Joe Fafard, and Chuck Close, among others.
Lincoln M. Alexander ‘Portrait Bust Tribute’
Born in 1922, Lincoln MacCauley Alexander is a distinguished Canadian, and a proud Hamiltonian. Alexander served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II, before settling in Hamilton and attending McMaster University. He went on to become Canada’s first elected black Member of Parliament in 1968, and then the first black Canadian to serve in a vice-regal position when he was appointed Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor in 1985. He has been awarded the Order of Ontario and made a Companion of the Order of Canada. His record of service to this country continues today in his role as spokesman on race relations and veteran’s issues.
Gino Cavicchioli is a Hamilton artist who spent his formative years in Rome, Italy among works by some of the great masters of sculpture. Cavicchioli approached former mayor Larry DiIanni last year to arrange an introduction to Lincoln Alexander, in the hopes of creating a bust in homage to the great man. Alexander ultimately agreed, and the result is an astoundingly lively and uncanny likeness to his subject, the result of over 200 hours of clay work. Cavicchioli has said of his portraiture: “I want it to look like them, but even more, I want if to feel like them.” He plans to create 10 bronze casts.
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February 10 to May 13, 2007
TD Waterhouse Great Masters Series: Édouard Vuillard
Curated by Patrick Shaw Cable
This focus exhibition features AGH holdings by Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940), one of the best known members of the French post-Impressionist group the Nabis. The Nabis adopted their name from the Hebrew word for prophet, signalling their vanguard commitment to create new symbols and to embrace art’s decorative roots. The gallery is fortunate to possess four representative works by Vuillard, who favoured intimate domestic themes and developed a collage-like style of interlocking patterns. Vuillard’s manner was inspired by the work of his dressmaker mother, whom he repeatedly portrayed in pictures like the AGH’s oil painting on paper, The Artist’s Mother. Among his other works on view are the portrait of a princess and the portrayal of a leading French mezzo-soprano: Jeanne Raunay in “Iphigenia”. Together the works illustrate central aspects of Vuillard’s original modernist approach, and they complement the concurrent banner exhibition-FRAMED-which explores portraiture through the ages.
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February 17 to May 13, 2007
I.D.
Curated by Sara Knelman
This group show looks at identity construction in art since the 1970s. Examining key work that has directly confronted the issue in visual terms, it considers how art has addressed cultural stereotyping and labelling, in part by re-contextualizing visual clichés and asking viewers to reconsider the line between representation and reality. The exhibition will include works by Suzy Lake, Lori Newdick, Michael Euyung Oh and Stephen Andrews.
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February 17 to May 21, 2007
Nell Tenhaaf: Fit / Unfit
Curated by Linda Jansma and organized by The Robert McLaughlin Gallery in collaboration with Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery and Art Gallery of Hamilton
Nell Tenhaaf’s work points to the artistic potential found in philosophical perceptions and scientific findings. This exhibit covers more than fifteen years of her practice in electronic media, including earlier works aimed at deconstructing the dominance of mainstream biological and biotechnology discourse, and recent works that attempt to represent these dynamics in the life cycle, often by involving the viewer as one element in continuous flux.
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June 30, 2006 to June 17, 2007
The Moving Figure: Canadian and European Sculpture
Curated by Alicia Boutilier and Patrick Shaw Cable
How does a sculptor convey movement in a figure using inert materials? How to convey the act of walking, dancing, swimming, or flying, through wood, stone, metal, or fibreglass? How about violent conflict? Or those involuntary reactions to pain, despair, and joy? Or even smaller gestures, like a tender caress? Or a reaching hand?
The Moving Figure delves into the AGH’s Canadian and European collection, in search for answers to these questions. The figure can be human or animal—clearly represented, or barely suggested through abstraction. The double entendre of the title is intentional. They move us. We cannot help but respond to these figures who share our space and draw attention to themselves through the efforts they make.
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March 3 to August 6, 2007
Edward Steichen: Nature Crystallized
Curated by Patrick Shaw Cable
One of the great heroes of 20th-century photography, Edward Steichen (American 1879–1973) pursued a long and fruitful career that included co-founding the Photo-secession group at the turn of the century, transforming fashion photography into fine art, and serving as director of the U.S. Navy Photographic Institute in WWII and then abandoning his own photography to become director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Some of Steichen’s most striking photographs were his close-ups of nature and still lifes, in which the artist’s viewpoints, lighting techniques, and long exposures diffused and abstracted forms, creating sensual “abstractions” emphasizing volume and weight. A selection of Steichen nature and still life photographs pulled from four photographic portfolios donated anonymously to the AGH in 2000 makes up this stunning exhibition on GALLERY LEVEL TWO.
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June 7 to August 26, 2007
Kent Monkman: The Triumph of Mischief
Curated by Sara Knelman
Kent Monkman is a contemporary Toronto-based artist of Cree ancestry. He makes work in various media, including video, photography, painting, installation and performance. Monkman takes inspiration from the histories depicted in 19th-century art – including early photography and Romantic painting – creating new stories through images that reinstate the missing narratives of Aboriginal peoples into these contexts. His work also explores stereotypes of masculinity and queer culture through the construction of piercingly witty situations that use sexuality as one tool for challenging the authority of these established histories. This retrospective of his work will centre on Monkman’s
alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. It will involve a site-specific installation of her Tipi Camp, as well as present a new video and painting, together with Monkman’s work from major public and private collections in Canada.
This exhibition is a collaborative project between the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Conceived and co-curated by David Liss, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art and Shirley Madill, Director/CEO, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the show tours to MOCCA, Winnipeg Art Gallery, St. Mary's University Art Gallery, and the AGGV after its viewing in Hamilton.
The AGH dedicated this exhibition in honour of the fiftieth anniversary of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Kent Monkman acknowledges that his work was made possible by the support of the Ontario Arts Council's Media Arts Program, and the Chalmers Arts Fellowship. His work was also generously supported with the assistance of Canada Council for the Arts, and the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council.
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May 26 to September 3, 2007
TD Waterhouse Great Masters Series
Around Seven: The Group of Seven & Their Contemporaries
Curated by Tobi Bruce
The year 1920 marked the inception of two important artistic groups. In Toronto, the Group of Seven held its first exhibition and in Montréal, a less formal (and much shorter lived) association was established, the Beaver Hall Group.While both groups were interested in furthering a modern approach to painting, the groups differed with respect to their subject interests. The bushwhacking ideology of the Group of Seven found representation in the rural and frontier landscapes of Canada, and while some of their Québec contemporaries shared this interest, there was a greater interest among the Montréal painters in depicting their immediate surroundings and the individuals who peopled them. Around Seven takes the work of the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson as its starting point and then considers the various approaches taken by their Ontario and Québec contemporaries – many of whom were women – to carve their own artistic paths in light of the Group’s national presence.
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June 2 to September 3, 2007
Wit and Whimsy: Folk Art in Canada
From the Collections of the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia
Curated by Tobi Bruce and Sara Knelman
Organized by the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Wit and Whimsy explores the fascinating world of twentieth-century folk art in Canada. Bringing together over fifty works by renowned folk artists from coast to coast, the exhibition provides an overview of the various working methods and thematic approaches explored by folk artists over several decades. A truly national representation is presented; Nova Scotia’s Maud Lewis and Joe Sleep find company with Québec’s Alcide St-Germain, Ontario’s John Elliot, Manitoba’s William Stefanchuk and British Columbia’s Frank Kocevar.
Drawing their inspiration from the land and the world around them, folk artists have traditionally looked to, and reflected, their environments and lived experiences. Wit and Whimsy thereby takes its lead from the artists and explores the three basic elements of the natural world: land, sea and air. Organized around these recurring thematic streams, the exhibition aims to construct a view of the world as seen through the eyes of the artist and their lived experience, providing intimate and insightful views into the human condition.
Incorporating paintings, small and large scale sculpture and dioramas, the exhibition presents both functional and purely aesthetic work. As such, boat models, life-size figures and farming scenes accompany whirligigs, birdhouses and weathervanes. Drawn entirely from the collections of two of Canada’s most important public collections of folk art – the Canadian Museum of Civilization (Gatineau, Québec) and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (Halifax, Nova Scotia) – Wit and Whimsy presents an introduction to the fantastical and engaging world of Canadian folk art.
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June 2 to September 3, 2007
Canadian Folk Art from the Collection of Susan A. Murray
Organized and circulated by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick
As part of our ongoing commitment to present private collections of significance, we invite you into the home of Susan A. Murray, a Toronto businesswoman and avid collector of Canadian folk art. A collector for over twenty years, Ms. Murray has amassed over five hundred objects of contemporary and historical folk art, building a holding that is distinguished as much by its breadth as its depth. As one of the most impressive private holdings of folk art in this country, the collection reflects both the eye and the passion of a discerning collector. The exhibition, which includes works by such recognized artists as Collins Eisenhauer, Joe Norris, Sidney Howard, Ewald Rentz and Charlie Tanner, offers the public a rare view of work normally kept behind closed doors.
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June 2 to September 3, 2007
Henri Rousseau, “Petit Douanier” of Modernism
Curated by Patrick Shaw Cable
Henri (“le Douanier” or “the customs officer”) Rousseau (1844–1910) occupied a unique position within early 20th-century modernism, standing as the archetype of the self-taught “naïve” painter, yet inspiring artists from Picasso to the Surrealists. Continuing the Gallery’s series of intimately scaled focus shows that highlight the work of major historical artists, Henri Rousseau, “Petit Douanier” of Modernism presents a select group of Rousseau paintings loaned from institutions in the United States and Europe such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Musée du Vieux-Château in Laval, France, the artist’s home town. Presenting works that span Rousseau’s entire career, the exhibition will explore an important theme in the painter’s oeuvre - his idyllic, personally constructed vision of town or city. Since no Canadian institution holds a significant work by this singularly gifted modernist master, this AGH focus exhibition will present a unique opportunity for visitors to appreciate Rousseau’s special place within modernism.
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March 10 to September 30, 2007
Karel Appel: The Cry of Colour
Curated by Patrick Shaw Cable
Deceased in 2006, Dutch artist Karel Appel was the most well known member of the international Cobra group (named from the first letters of the founding artists’ home cities of Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam). Organized after World War II, the Cobra artists rejected Western culture’s emphasis on reason and embraced spontaneous expressionist forms in reaction to the horrors of war. They were inspired by primitive and folk art as well as children’s art, an influence particularly evident in the jarring colours and whimsical subjects that Appel favoured. The Art Gallery of Hamilton, chosen by Karel Appel in the 1970s as “the institution of record” for his graphic works and other multiples, possesses an extensive collection of the artist’s colour lithographs. The Cry of Colour will feature two oil paintings and several large-scale, multi-media prints in the gallery’s interior stairwell, a fitting setting for his work’s exuberant decorative forms and bright colour contrasts.
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April 28 to December 2, 2007
Wild Nature: George McLean and Chris Bacon from the Collection of Mr. David Braley
Curated by Patrick Shaw Cable
In addition to being a principal supporter of the AGH and its programmes, David Braley has for several years assembled an impressive collection of the art of two leading contemporary wildlife painters—the Canadians George McLean and Chris Bacon. Wild Nature continues the Gallery’s commitment to share with the public significant private regional collections. Mr. Braley’s focused interest on the work of McLean and Bacon has resulted in an important collection of the best work of two artists whose distinctive personal views complement and contrast with each other, creating a meaningful dialogue within the Braley collection, and illustrating the range that wildlife painting can offer. Each artist’s work is based on consummate technical skill and close observation of nature, yet McLean and Bacon possess distinct viewpoints. While Bacon specializes in avian painting, frequently
silhouetting his birds against minimalist natural backgrounds and rendering them in delicate watercolour, McLean represents his animals immersed and sometimes camouflaged within a verdant natural world filled with meticulously rendered details of foliage.
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April 28 to December 2, 2007
A Visual Bestiary
Curated by Patrick Shaw Cable
Organized from the AGH collection, this exhibition explores the theme of animals in European, Canadian, and American historical art, featuring the rich and diverse symbolism of the animal in painting and sculpture. For example, from the Romantic period come works by the great French painter Eugène Delacroix and his friend, the sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye, for whom exotic animals in mortal combat symbolized the primal power of nature. Later in time and standing at an opposite thematic scale are domestic farming views by the early 20th-century American social realist George Bellows (Pigs and Donkey) and the 19th-century amateur Canadian painter Ebenezer Birrell (Good Friends).
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September 29 to December 30, 2007
Antoine Plamondon (1804 - 1895): Milestones of an Artistic Journey
Organized and circulated by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, a public corporation funded by the Quebec Ministry of Culture and Communications. The exhibition is funded under the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Museum Assistance Program.
As one of the key figures in Québec’s art community in the 19th century, Antoine Plamondon occupies an important place in the early history of Canadian art. Following an initial period of study with artist Joseph Legaré, Plamondon studied for a time in Paris (1826 - 1830). Following his return to Québec he began work on religious and portrait paintings, earning a fine reputation as portrait artist and copyist of religious and secular paintings in the 1830s and 1840s. During that period he also took on apprentices, including Théophile Hamel, and gave drawing courses at both the Québec City Seminary and the General Hospital. In 1851, midway through his painting career, he relocated to Pointe-aux-Trembles (known today as Neuville) where he established a large studio and produced several portraits and large-format religious works, along with some genre paintings and original compositions.
Drawn almost exclusively from the collection of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and organized to mark the 200th anniversary of the artist’s birth, Milestones of an Artistic Journey presents works from all periods of the artist’s prodigious output. The AGH is particularly proud to be lending its important portraits of Mme and M. Elzéar Bédard to this prestigious exhibition. A monograph on the artist’s life, published in both English and French, accompanies the exhibition. Click here for catalogue...
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September 22, 2007 to January 6, 2008
Atelier Series:
Gerald Zeldin: Days of Views
Curated by Sara Knelman
Hamilton artist Gerald Zeldin brings new and recent drawings to the AGH this fall. In this work, Zeldin creates a visual narrative out of the often disconnected and fleeting ideas that parade through the mind, questioning the possibility of narrative sequence in the chaos of daily life. This collection of work reads like a stream of consciousness graphic novel, conveying the viewer through the everyday views of the artist’s mind. Zeldin’s characteristically whimsical style complements his masterful skill in figurative painting and drawing. Zeldin teaches drawing to students of animation at Sheridan College.
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September 29, 2007 to January 6, 2008
Contemporary Art Project Series:
François Morelli: Table D’Hôte
Curated by Sara Knelman
Montreal artist François Morelli’s investigations of the everyday take shape in large-scale sculpture, installation, performance, and site-specific wall-stampings. His work bridges the gap between art and life by exposing the fragility inherent in the daily activities we all perform, like eating, walking, and sleeping. Over the course of his career, Morelli has created a unique visual language through the creation of iconic imagery which he translates into sculpture and custom made stamps that are reinvented and elaborated in varying scales, combinations and media. Viewers are invited to his Table D’Hôte to sample recent and new work, including an installation of porcelain plates and site-specific wall-drawings.
François Morelli led a stamping workshop with a group of local grade 8 students on Friday, October 12, 2007, as part of the James North Art Crawl.
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September 22, 2007 to February 3, 2008
RUNWAY: Contemporary Fashion by Richard Robinson
Curated by Sara Knelman
Presented by RBC Royal Bank & KPMG
Exclusive Media Sponsor: Hamilton Magazine
This stunning exhibition of fashion design by Paris-trained, Ottawa-based Richard Robinson, Fashion Designer, Couturier and leader of the Richard Robinson Academy of Fashion Design puts a Canadian designer in the cultural spotlight. The Art Gallery of Hamilton will display Robinson’s more dramatic garb, including clothes inspired by fantasy and the future that challenge the imagination and blur the line between fashion and art. The exhibition will showcase Robinson’s famous breast-plate bejewelled cat suit and a dress accented with silk flowers, as well as a number of sketches that examine the design process from concept to reality. On September 20th, the AGH hosted a fashion show of Robinson’s designs to launch the exhibition.
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September 22, 2007 to February 3, 2008
TD Waterhouse Great Masters Series:
Roger Vivier - the "Fabergé of Footwear"
Curated by Patrick Shaw Cable
As a complement to the large exhibition RUNWAY featuring fashions by contemporary Canadian couturier Richard Robinson, this special instalment of the gallery’s Great Masters Series spotlights a major artist in the history of women’s shoe design: Roger Vivier (French 1913-1998). Known as the “Fabergé of footwear,” Vivier created some of the most important shoes of the mid-20th century, first as designer for Christian Dior when he opened a shoe department in 1953, and then in Vivier’s own Paris salon beginning in 1963. A timeless Vivier classic was the chrome-buckle, square-toe Pilgrim flat pump, worn by film icon Catherine Deneuve in Luis Buñuel’s 1967 film Belle du Jour. Known for his highly original heels mimicking such forms as the comma, ball, pyramid, or escargot, Vivier is attributed with the invention of the stiletto heel in the early 1950s. Imitating the small, taper-bladed dagger for which it is named, the seductive spiky stiletto was made possible by an internal strengthening rod of steel. Examples of Vivier’s designs are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Musée de la Mode et du Textile in the Palais du Louvre, Paris. An important collection of Vivier’s artistry closer to home is Toronto’s Bata Shoe Museum, to which the gallery is grateful for the generous loan of Vivier’s work temporarily displayed at the AGH.
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August 11, 2007 to February 17, 2008
Edward Steichen Portraits
Curated by Patrick Shaw Cable
Following the display of nature and still-life photographs by Edward Steichen in the first half of 2007, this exhibition presents another significant aspect of the photographer’s work—his portraits of celebrities and fellow artists. One of the heroes in the early history of photography as a fine art, Steichen pursued several different pathways. Early on he was elected to the Linked ring society of British Pictorialist photographers. His most famous image from that early period was the 1902 soft-focus, romantic portrait of the great sculptor Auguste Rodin facing his masterpiece The Thinker. Subsequently the photographer changed course and co-founded the Photo-secession group, and then on the eve of World War I he became interested in photojournalism, which led to work during both world wars as a photographer for the U.S. military. The necessity for sharp resolution in his aerial photos during World War I inspired Steichen’s interest in photographic technology, which served him later when he became Chief of Photography for Condé Nast Publications. Defining an era, Steichen’s portraits in Vanity Fair and Vogue combined the photographer’s sense of crisp design with his ability to capture personality. The portraits on view at the AGH, selected from the gallery’s four Steichen portfolios, reveal Steichen’s elegant taste in portrayals of stars like Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper, and his admiration for other artists similarly inspired by nature, such as the sculptor Constantin Brancusi and the poet Carl Sandburg.
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March 3, 2007 to February 17, 2008
Domestic Poetry
Curated by Patrick Shaw Cable
The traditionally humble still life rose to fresh prominence in 19th-century Europe, when newly empowered middle-class patrons provided a substantial market for the genre and still lifes became increasingly accepted by official exhibition juries. By the early 20th century, European modernists embraced still life as a suitable vehicle for the exploration of new concepts of pictorial structure and design. This exhibition features the Gallery’s special collection of historic European still lifes, many of which date from the late 19th century and the period between the two World Wars. The works range from a handsome group in The Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Collection produced by important French realist painters such as Antoine Vollon, to pictures from the late careers of the masters of early 20th-century modernism, including the Fauve André Derain, and the Cubists Georges Braque and Fernand Léger.
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October 5, 2007 to April 20, 2008
The Chic of the Parisienne
Curated by Patrick Shaw Cable
The parisienne-woman of Paris-fashionably dressed in the city’s café-concerts or on the boulevards (or, in various states of undress at her toilette) was a staple theme rife with meaning in the art and literature of late 19th-century France. From the bourgeois beauty at her mirror to the elegant and successful courtisane, from shop clerks to dancers, the female body and persona occupied centre stage within the spectacle and sophistication of belle époque Paris. The Chic of the Parisienne presents several prints of parisiennes produced by Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen and a handful of other printmakers from the period such as Jean-Louis Forain, Pierre Bonnard, and Louis Valtat. Steinlen produced hundreds of images of women in different media, including a number of lithographic covers for the publication Gil blas illustré to accompany the short stories of contemporary realist authors. One of the largest and most striking works in this intimate stairwell exhibition is the colour drypoint
Femme au chapeau by Paul-César Helleu, renowned for his exquisite drypoints of fashionable beauties.
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The Jean and Ross Fischer Gallery
March 24 to May 13, 2007
Women’s Art Association’s 111th Annual Juried Exhibition
Maintaining the Gallery’s commitment to the presentation of work by local groups, the AGH will host the 111th Annual Juried exhibition of the Women’s Art Association of Hamilton in the Jean and Ross Fischer Gallery. Hamilton’s WAA is an active organization with a long history, and the Gallery is pleased to have established a regular schedule of serving as host to the WAA’s annual juried show.
February 10 to March 11, 2007
The Golden Age of Hamilton Curling
In celebration of the Tim Hortons Brier’s return to Hamilton in 2007, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, in partnership with the Brier Host Committee, is pleased to present the exhibition The Golden Age of Hamilton Curling to coincide with 78th Annual Brier and its theme of “the Golden Touch”. Displaying of one-of-a-kind memorabilia, finely crafted trophies, and an array of championship banners, this exhibition celebrates the illustrious 136-years of the Hamilton Thistle Club (1853 to 1989), the rich 140-year history of the Hamilton Victoria Club (1867 to the present) and the Glendale Golf and Country Club (the home of Ontario’s representative to the Brier in 2000). From February 17th to 24th, the Tankard Trophy was on display in this exhibition.
May 19 to August 19, 2007
Follow Your Art 2007
A collaboration between the SAGE Program at Strathcona School and the AGH, the SAGE and SAGE Quest students and teachers have once again made a series of visits to the Gallery in preparation for Follow Your Art 2007. Over the course of the year they worked closely with AGH Art Educator: School Programmes, Pearl Van Geest, touring and studying AGH exhibitions. The work shown will relate to the themes of nature and personal identity illustrated through canvas self-portraits and mixed media landscapes. Finally, the collection of mylar Monarch butterflies migrating across the Jean and Ross Fischer Gallery is in tribute to the SAGE Program's ongoing project raising and releasing Monarchs.
August 21 to Sunday, September 9, 2007
EXPOSED! New Works from Art Rental
The Art Gallery of Hamilton’s Art Rental and Sales Programme has just celebrated its 52nd year. ‘Picture Rental’, as the programme was termed when it was established in 1955, was brought together by the AGH Women’s Auxiliary (now the Volunteer Committee) in the hopes of encouraging public interest in Canadian art, aiding both artists and the Gallery’s permanent collection with a source of income. The service was open only once per month and was run entirely by a group of dedicated volunteers. ‘Picture Rental’ was a daring endeavour, as the AGH was one of only five art museums to have such a service in North America, and the only one of its kind in Canada.
By the 1970s the Art Rental service was open more frequently and hosted annual art sales called “The Hang-Ups”, boasting such artists from the art rental collection as Harold Town, Jack Bush, Jean-Paul Riopelle and Norval Morriseau, among others. The programme’s initiative proved to be successful not only in introducing these now iconic Canadian artists to the general public, but also in making these works of art accessible to view, rent or purchase.
Today, the Art Rental and Sales Programme, run in conjunction with the Shop at AGH, is a service open six days a week to the public and to corporate clients for the rental or sale of contemporary Canadian art work. The diverse collection features over 500 works by more than 140 artists and continues to grow with new talent, particularly from the local area. Over the last five years, the Art Rental and Sales Programme has returned over $140,000 to participating artists and in turn to the local artist community. With this, Art Rental and Sales remains true to its original goal of introducing and supporting our artists.
Exposed! New Works from Art Rental was organized in part to celebrate the programme’s success, and to give a hand to the artists who make it happen.
September 11, 2007 to January 27, 2008
Ghost Signs of Hamilton
Organized and presented by The Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, Hamilton Regional Branch in partnership with Dave Kuruc
Ghost Signs of Hamilton continues the gallery's regular collaboration with the local branch of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, a vital registered charity almost 75 years old that is devoted to protecting and conserving Ontario's architectural and landscape heritage. This exhibition organized by the ACO reveals and explores the numerous architectural "ghost signs" to be found in downtown Hamilton. These huge signs painted on the sides of buildings in the early part of the 20th century -like the faded Coca-Cola sign recently uncovered by demolition on King Street East-provide fascinating clues to the rich cultural life and economic development of Hamilton in years gone by.
Sponsored by NC Pestill Ltd. and The Hamilton and Burlington Society of Architects.
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