Congratulations Designers

Award winning Leonard Baskin book designed by Neographics, Hamilton, published by McMaster Museum of Art

The McMaster Museum of Art would like to heartily thank and congratulate Book Design Award winners Neographics, Hamilton and Underline Studio for their extraordinary work on McMaster Museum of Art publications. The awards were announced last Friday at The Ontario Association of Art Galleries (OAAG) awards gala at Hart House, University of Toronto.

Neographics, Hamilton won for Leonard Baskin: Works in the collection of McMaster Museum of Art. This book was published by the Museum in 2009 as a complement to an exhibition of work by artist and Gehenna Press founder, Leonard Baskin (1922-2000).

The OAAG jury describe the publication as, “a perfect marriage between art and design. The designer of the book had a particular sensitivity to the artist’s work and a truly inspired idea for the design emerged … The net outcome is a fresh, fun and memorable book. Kudos to the curator and art gallery for saying yes to the idea in the first place!” 

Said Branka Vidovic, Neographics President and Creative Director, “It somehow seems fitting that a book about a book designer is honoured with an award for book design.” After thanking the Museum Director Carol Podedworny, the artist’s brother and prominent Hamiltonian Rabbi Bernard Baskin, and the jury, she closed her acceptance speech with a quote from Leonard Baskin himself. “People like me, who care about printing, constitute the tiniest lunatic fringe in the nation.”

The Shelagh Keeley catalogue, published in 2010 by the MMA and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, designed by Underline Studio also won a design award. More about this publication in an earlier post.

Museum Catalogue Wins Prestigious Design Award

The Shelagh Keeley catalogue jointly produced by the McMaster Museum of Art and Robert McLaughlin Gallery; designed by Underline Studio, Toronto; has won a prestigious AIGA design award and is being included in the AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers.

To assure that selections become a part of a permanent accessible historical record of notable graphic design—the AIGA Design Archives (
http://designarchives.aiga.org
)—each piece is published online with traditional credit information and is published in the AIGA annual 365: AIGA Year in Design. In addition, one set of the physical artifacts becomes part of the AIGA Design Archives, now housed at the Denver Art Museum, and a second one becomes part of the Rare Books and Manuscripts collection at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library within Columbia University’s Butler Library.

The jury’s selections will be mounted as a public exhibition scheduled to open at the AIGA National Design Center in New York in 2010. In addition, the show will travel to AIGA chapters, student groups and galleries throughout the country and China during 2011.

The McMaster Museum of Art will be presenting the art of Shelagh Keeley this fall. Shelagh Keeley came to prominence in the 1980s and has a significant early body of work that is housed in numerous Canadian institutions and, given Keeley’s 22-year residence in New York City, in most major American institutions. From very early on Keeley’s drawings challenged the established art world with investigations into Africa, AIDS, health and the body. More recent work includes bookworks that serve as an archive of the artist’s visual vocabulary during nearly three decades of practice. They record themes that have pervaded her practice: diversity, history, representation and that which is political and social. This monograph is the first critical assessment of Keeley’s thirty-year career.

It is available from ABC ArtBooks Canada

McMaster Museum of Art posters

Do you have a poster of the Monet? Yes we do!! At last.

Two beautiful posters featuring art from McMaster’s permanent collection have just been published as a complement to our summer exhibition, Oil Cloth Lunch, and other reasons to be cheerful.  The bridge is the theme of one poster (Claude Monet’s Waterloo Bridge 1903 and Ando Hiroshige’s Ohashi Bridge 1857) and food is the theme of the other (Tony Scherman’s Oil Cloth Lunch 1977, a promised gift of the artist; and Philips Breughel’s 17^th century Still life with pike, barbel and vegetables.)

The 21 x 36 inch posters are available for $2 at the Museum while supplies last. They were designed by Branka Vidovic of Neographics, Hamilton.

McMaster Museum of Art

All in a Day’s Work

It’s not that I don’t enjoy using a level from time to time, but after
this…

Michael Allgoewer

this…

J.M.W. Turner Installation. photo: Roy Timm Photography

and this…

John Abrams

Assembling a Sasquatch is a pleasure.

Installing Allyson Mitchell’s Ladies Sasquatch exhibition

Actually the level is indispensible, but I have another helpful tip for anyone who is about to hang artwork in a grid. If you are hanging a group of identically sized objects and want to guarantee that your grid will be visually pleasing, make sure that the distance between the objects is a divisor of the width of the object itself. (sounds complicated, but it’s not). For example, 16 inch panels look best with 2, 4 or 8 inches between them; 25 inch panels look best with 5 inches between them.

- Jennifer Petteplace, Preparator / Installation Officer, McMaster Museum of Art

 

Painting Walls at the Museum and at Home

McMaster Museum of Art - 4th floor galleries

According to Oscar Wilde, sage green walls show off paintings to best advantage. (And he certainly paid attention to decor – As he lay dying in a Paris hotel he is famously quoted as saying, ‘My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has to go.’)

When the Museum opened in 1994, I was surprised how many visitors wanted to know what specific paint colours we used because they wanted to paint rooms in their own homes the same colours. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised, having once coated my living room in colour best described as “chicken wiener”. It’s not easy to pick a paint colour based on paint chips alone. In any case, Museum staff have had almost daily requests. Particularly popular shades were those on the 4^th floor gallery walls showcasing 16th – early 20th century paintings.

For the record, here they are. All are from Pratt & Lambert.
Heather Dusk #2331 – Levy Gallery (blue)
Nesika Bay #2223 – Levy Gallery (sage green)
Dusty Mink #2037 – Tomlinson Gallery (pinkish taupe)
Ancestral #1426 – Sherman Gallery (white)
Icy Morn #1470 – Lobby and Stairwell (pale green)

For insight into how the curators at the Smithsonian Institute select their paint colours, check out: The Art of Colour, At Museums, Walls Play Off What’s on Them

- Rose Anne Prevec, Communications Officer, McMaster Museum of Art