McMaster Lends Works to Winnipeg Art Gallery’s Centennial Exhibition

George Romney (British 1734-1802), Robert, 9th Baron Petre, Demonstrating the Use of an Écorché Figure to His Son, Robert Edward, c. 1775 – 1776, Oil on canvas, 76 x 63.2 cm, Levy Bequest Purchase, 1994

Claude Monet (French 1840-1926), Waterloo Bridge, Effet de Soleil, 1903, Oil on canvas, 65.1 x 100 cm, Gift of Herman Levy, Esq., O.B.E., 1984

Aelbrecht Bouts(Netherlandish, c. 1451-1549), The Man of Sorrows, c. 1503, Oil on wood panel, 45.7 x 30.5 cm, Levy Bequest Purchase, 1994

Aelbrecht Bouts (Netherlandish, c. 1451-1549), Mater Dolorosa, c. 1503, Oil on wood panel, 45.7 x 30.5 cm, Levy Bequest Purchase, 1994

Gustave Caillebotte (French 1848-1894), Voiliers au Mouillage sur la Seine, à Argenteuil, 1883, Oil on canvas, 60.2 x 73.3 cm, Gift of Herman Levy, Esq., O.B.E., 1984

McMaster Museum of Art (MMA) has lent five major paintings to the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) for a special exhibition celebrating the WAG’s Centennial this year. 100 Masters: Only in Canada will run at the WAG from May 11 to August 18. The works of art on loan are (shown above – click on each image for full details)  The Man of Sorrows and Mater Dolorosa, 1503, by Albrecht Bouts; Voiliers au Mouillage sur la Seine, à Argenteuil, 1883, by Gustave Caillebotte; Waterloo Bridge, Effet de Soleil, 1903, by Claude Monet; and Robert, 9^th Baron Petre, Demonstrating the Use of an écorché Figure to His Son, Robert Edward, c. 1775-1776, by George Romney.

The WAG is celebrating its 100^th anniversary as Canada’s oldest civic art gallery by mounting the largest exhibition in its history. It will feature works by Rembrandt, Gainsborough, Van Gogh, Monet, Matisse, Picasso, Warhol and more—all borrowed from 28 galleries across Canada plus the Walker Art Centre and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

“We are honoured to be part of WAG’s centenary celebration and delighted to have, not one, but five works from McMaster’s collection selected for this landmark exhibition,” says MMA Director/Chief Curator Carol Podedworny. “McMaster’s loaned paintings span the breadth of our European collections, 1500–1900.  We like to think of our collection as one of the best in the country and this “best of” project highlights it as a rich source of research, loan and exhibition prospects.”

“The wonderful tradition of museums sending their best works to commemorate the opening or anniversary of a sister institution is longstanding,” says Stephen Borys, WAG Director & CEO, curator of the exhibition, who spent two years crisscrossing the country to secure the 100 loans for the show. “The works that have been chosen are among the most treasured pieces in the collections of these galleries. Many of them are rarely lent by their respective galleries but exceptions have been made to help the WAG celebrate this important milestone.”

Packing McMaster’s treasures for the journey west.

K. Nicol’s blog: wisdom + madness every 3.65 days

Screen capture of K. Nicol’s Blog: http://every3point65.blogspot.ca/

For those who’ve seen his work and want more…

Every 3.65 days exactly, artist K. Nicol updates his blog.
100 posts in 1 year.
100 keen and often humorous observations about art and daily life that you don’t want to miss.
http://every3point65.blogspot.ca/

K. Nicol is one of two contemporary artists (along with Hyang Cho) represented in Predisposed – an exhibition drawing gasps, chuckles, and awe from visitors amidst the ticking of 100 different clocks.  Described as a “must-see gem of a show”, Predisposed continues until August 3.

“Ken Nicol’s work is part savant and part madness; using everyday objects to the extreme he creates work that boggles the imagination.” (Todd Falkowsky via The Canadian Design Resource).

Hyang Cho, K. Nicol and Joseph Beuys in New Exhibition at McMaster

The McMaster Museum of Art presents

Hyang Cho, K. Nicol and Joseph Beuys
PREDISPOSED (…to thinking through the eye of mutual convenience)

March 28 – August 3, 2013

Reception and Artist Talks: Thursday April 4, 6 – 8 pm

The work of Hyang Cho and K. Nicol offers a view into contemporary art practices in Canada. This exhibition looks at their recent works in the context of conceptual, “post conceptual” and systemic practices. An international perspective is provided by the inclusion of a 1968 “unique” multiple work by Joseph Beuys (German 1921-1986), an artist most-often associated with the Fluxus movement.

Although coming from very different cultural backgrounds, the studio practices of Cho and Nicol are characterized by notional and self-reflexive organizing and ordering systems that draw cues from the everyday, examining and selecting readymade elements, and raiding philosophy. They express time implicitly and explicitly through a disciplined performative dimension. The outcomes may be described as “obsessive”—or, as conveyed in the exhibition subtitle, “predisposed to …”—but they also share an idea with Beuys, to “function as carriers for complex ideas [as much] as their capacity to release a communicative impulse between artists and viewer.”1

If the formative period of conceptual and radical art in the mid-to-late 1960s was an anti-authoritarian attitude and a “dematerialization” of art as object, how does this relate to a climate of retinal consumption today, and social media that encourages unfiltered and promiscuous chatter about anything or nothing—yet done “because you can.”

The exhibition, therefore, poses questions rather than (at best) slippery and problematic definitions.

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Hyang Cho was born in South Korea. She first studied at Sogang University in Seoul; received her MFA from the University of Guelph, and is based in Guelph. Hyang Cho works courtesy of the artist and Georgia Scherman Projects.

K. Nicol grew up in Ancaster Ontario. He studied at Sheridan College and the Ontario College of Art and Design, and is based in Toronto. K. Nicol works courtesy of the artist, MKG127, and Micah Lexier.

This is the first exhibition for both in a public museum; a catalogue will be available during the course of the exhibition.

1. Benjamin Dodenhoff from Joseph Beuys: Parallel Processes

Employee Orientation Tours at the Museum

Every month we welcome our new colleagues to McMaster University as part of The Centre for Continuing Education’s New Employee Orientation afternoon-long Scavenger Hunt Mission to explore central campus and the departments and services available here.  The Museum has participated since the beginning of this program and it’s always an exciting afternoon meeting new people and, frankly, brag about our outstanding art collection.  Yesterday’s tours were exceptionally fun, especially exploring our About The Mind exhibition.

the attendees came back from the scavenger hunt yesterday and they are really “wowed” by the Museum of Art, the nuclear reactor and the planetarium!

An important aspect of these tours is often beyond exhibition viewing and places to spend a quiet lunch hour – the Museum does offer group tours, team-building activities, and free conference room facilities.  Interested?  Check out our website for more information:
Book a Tour
Book a Room

Extraordinary Art Collectors

Our new exhibition looks at the passion of an extraordinary Hamilton art collector Herman Levy.

Last weekend, MMA docents gathered for a lively discussion of other passionate collectors, Herbert and Dorothy Vogel, who quietly accumulated and filled their one room Manhattan apartment with over 2,000 pieces, by unknown artists who later rose to international acclaim. You can watch the video about these curatorial visionaries online at TVO – fascinating!

Click on image to go to “Herb and Dorothy” on TVO

http://ww3.tvo.org/video/166098/herb-and-dorothy

Robot Art Reviewer Debuts in Museum Exhibition

Graduate student Immony Men with Dr. David Harris Smith (McMaster University) and kulturBOT the robot art ‘reviewer’. photo: Sarah Janes

kultureBOT reviews the exhibition, projecting photos of the gallery overlayed with text. photo: Sarah Janes

my kulturBOT 1.0 is a robotic art show reviewer that attends exhibitions and projects text-captioned photos of the galleries, visitors and art. The brainchild and collaborative research project of McMaster’s Dr. David Harris Smith, Dr. Frauke Zeller from University College, London, UK and graduate student Immony Men, the robot debuts in the newest exhibition at the McMaster Museum of Art, About the Mind.

“We wanted to use the robot in order to stress the inherent vagueness of what [the philosopher] Bourdieu described as the ‘demarcation line between the world of technical objects and the world of aesthetic objects,’” said the artists. “…also to question, whether my kulturBOT 1.0 is itself an object of art, or rather a simple domestic floor sweeping robot.”

my kulturBOT 1.0 communicates with humans through language, movement and images.  However it does not look humanoid. Its casing is that of an inexpensive floor sweeper, albeit one that has gone far beyond the original intention of its maker.

The researchers observed that when machines do not perform in a predictable way, they give the impression that they have developed their own will and, by extension, intelligence. In this way, my kultureBOT’s randomness serves to make it seem more human. Sweeping its way through the gallery, the robot captures images indiscriminately and combines them with poetic sentences—also randomly generated from F. T. Marinetti’s (1909) Futurist Manifesto. An example:

But we are for wild beasts! Let us throw us in my way. What can only cure forces of the railway station and admirations of the words!

Smith and Zeller’s research looks at the history, philosophies and even phobias relating to robots. Says Museum Director, Carol Podedworny, “Within the context of the exhibition About the Mind, my kultureBOT 1.0 provides an invaluable entry point into discussions about both artificial intelligence and the works of art on view. I’m looking forward to great ‘reviews.’”

kulturbot upgrades are ongoing and Dr. Smith anticipates  the robot will soon be sharing its composite exhibition ‘reviews’ on social media— on Facebook and on Twitter

About the Mind Exhibition

Natalka Husar’s “R for Christmas” 2012

Natalka Husar, Redemption for Christmas, 2012, 7 x 5″, oil on canvas

The plot continues in this year’s ‘R for Christmas’ painted book cover by Natalka Husar. After some consideration…Remorse, Rebuke, Reprimand…the final book cover for 2012 is Redemption for Christmas.

Check out Natalka Husar’s book covers of Christmas past on previous posts:
2011 
2010
2009 plus earlier covers and a bit about the series 

And Happy Holiday Season!

Takao Tanabe’s Prairie Drawings

Takao Tanabe, The Land Near Standard, n.d., Graphite on paper, 55.9 x 64.8 cm
Collection of the Artist, © Takao Tanabe, 2011

The stylistic diversity of Takao Tanabe is on display in the MMA’s current exhibit, Takao Tanabe: Chronicles of Form and Place. Here you can find non-objective, abstract, and geometric pieces, alongside intricate graphic drawings and high realism.

One particular section of Tanabe’s exhibition has prompted very different and interesting responses from viewers…

In the late 1970s and early 80s, the artist was travelling quite often across the prairies and foothills of western Canada. As someone who enjoys embracing an artistic challenge, Tanabe created a number of large scale graphite drawings inspired by his night time travels across this landscape. Multi-layered, dense, dark, and yet defining, very recognizably, a landscape, these works demonstrate a determination and skill that visitors often comment about.

I’m asked fairly regularly about them and I always take the opportunity to ask how the visitor feels about the works. Surrounded by the six very large, very dark, drawings, visitors tend to respond in one of two ways:

1) they love the subtlety, and the individual way of representing the landscape. They want to take these pieces home with them. I’ve even had someone describe the thick graphite as “warm”.

2) they find them overwhelming. While they appreciate the time and skill that went into the creation of these works, they can’t imagine such a dark and emotionally-charged piece greeting them every morning in their living room.

Compelling, overwhelming, or something else? What do you think about Tanabe’s dark prairie drawings?

During his talk at the MMA, the artist himself commented  that these were some of his favourite pieces. With so many works and styles to choose from, you can see if you agree with Tanabe by visiting Chronicles of Form and Place. The exhibition closes December 8th.

- Teresa Gregorio, Museum Monitor / Information Officer, McMaster Museum of Art

McMaster’s Art Collection – Now Online!

How many Picassos does McMaster have?
Where did McMaster get a Monet?
What links First Nations art to Pop art?

The McMaster Museum of Art (MMA) proudly launches two major digital projects that provide unprecedented, in-depth access to McMaster’s art collection. The projects include eMuseum, an online database of the art collection, and its complement, the “Curiosity Engine“, a virtual gallery for exploring connections between art and artworks. Both intiatives have been generously funded by Dr. John Panabaker and a Museums & Technology Grant from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

   

The eMuseum project makes public an up-to-date searchable database of McMaster’s art collection, thousands of entries, complete with details about each object, its origins and where copyright allows, an image. In launching this project McMaster also becomes part of a network of major art institutions—including the Smithsonian, the Frick Collection, and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. Our art collection now joins their collective database, accessible by curators and researchers at those galleries.

“This project will be an invaluable resource for McMaster students, visitors and researchers around the globe,” says Museum Director Carol Podedworny. “It has been twenty years since the last comprehensive collection catalogue was published and the Museum has acquired thousands of objects in the interim. The digitization project was a massive undertaking, requiring many hours of staff research, data entry and photography by the late John Tamblyn. McMaster has an outstanding collection of important works of art and now the world will know it.”

The second component, the Curiosity Engine, developed by the media visionaries at Parallel World Labs, is a tool for visitors to explore the connections between artists and artworks through related content and the lenses of culture, history and society. The objective is to offer both an understanding and an emotional relationship to works of art and an understanding of how artists observe our changing world, its past and present, through creative processes.

The beta version begins with a contemporary work by First Nations artist Bob Boyer, going on to explore the stories of the Americas and beyond.  The Engine is designed to expand and encompass more of the collection and growing connections over time.

“Support for these projects has really catapulted the Museum into the 21^st Century, allowing us to go digital in a big way,” says Podedworny.

Still wondering about those questions up top?  The answers are a keystroke away… but prepare to go deeper. Begin your tour from the Museum of Art’s website.

Screen shot of the McMaster Museum of Art eMuseum database

Museum’s Used Frame Sale

Wednesday October 17^th, 11 am – 4 pm

(or until the frames sell out)

Once a decade or so, the McMaster Museum of Art clears out its stockpile of extra framing materials in a great big sale. It’s happening again next week, with  hundreds of used frames and mats for sale in the Museum’s Education Gallery (lower level).

Great deals with prices starting at $2. Cash sales only.