“Nobody flunks museum”

Education Coordinator Nicole Knibb leading guided tours at the McMaster Museum of Art during Lifelong Learning week

I love this quote¹,  especially now at the end of June, a time when lots of elementary and secondary school students visit the Museum.  It reminds me of the important role of museums as alternative spaces of learning, or as museum education gurus John Falk and Lynn Dierking consider them, spaces for free-choice learning. Students come here to explore our exhibitions, spaces, and behind-the-scenes areas to learn about art and museums.  They are free to look, ask questions, and engage in a wider dialogue surrounding the works of art in McMaster’s collection.  We cover a lot of ground from how a hygrothermograph works, to various printmaking methods, to imagining how life would be like in Goya’s time during the Napoleonic Wars.

It’s not only the students who learn.  Their questions and discussion keep me on my toes and I am continually amazed by how much I can learn from them.  Thank you to all of the thoughtful teachers who bring their students here to the McMaster Museum of Art.  It’s been a great year!

- Nicole Knibb, Education Co-ordinator, McMaster Museum of Art

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1. Frank Oppenheimer, the founder of San Francisco’s Exploratorium once quipped, `Nobody flunks museum.’ From Gardner, Howard (1999) The Disciplined Mind: Beyond Facts And Standardized Tests, The K-12 Education That Every Child Deserves, New York: Simon and Schuster (and New York: Penguin Putnam), p.185.

 

Views of Spearin and Woodley exhibitions

In addition to our ongoing 125th anniversary exhibition, the Museum celebrates the opening of two new exhibitions with a Public Reception on Friday June 1, 6-8 pm. Hope you can join us.  Here’s a preview of what you’ll see – and a few behind the scenes shots of what it took to get there.

Gary Spearin: iNifiNiTi (solo exhibition) and PAINTING BEYOND a body of views (an orchestration of McMaster’s collection by Spearin)
and
The Last Things Before the Last, Curated by E.C. Woodley

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Group of 7 inspires Group of 15

Last week, Ms. Wilson’s Grade 3 students from Lee Academy came for a tour of the galleries and a behind the scenes look at some of the Group of Seven paintings in McMaster’s collection. Inspired, they went to work on their own group masterpiece, “Changing Seasons”. Have a look…

The inspiration: selected works by Group of 7 members (and a Tom Thomson painting)
in this mini exhibition for visiting student group

The achievement: 'Changing Seasons', 2012
by Lee Academy's Group of 15

- Nicole Knibb, Education Co-ordinator, McMaster Museum of Art

Art and Science Panel, Pics and Poetry

Panelists from left: Patangi Rangachari, Daniela Schlüter, Derek Besant, Roger Jacobs, and moderator, Sean Caulfield

Last week’s Panel Discussion on Stem Cell Culture: Biomedical Research, Popular Culture and Art was a great success with more than 250 guests in attendance. For those who missed it, please have a look at the slide show below and the terrific coverage in the Hamilton Spectator article.

At the close of the panel discussion, McMaster Professor (Emeritus) Patangi Rangachari read a verse from W.H. Auden’s poem After Reading a Child’s Guide to Modern Physics — a selection that seemed to be perfect for the occasion:

This passion of our kind
For the process of finding out
Is a fact one can hardly doubt,
But I would rejoice in it more
If I knew more clearly what
We wanted the knowledge for,
Felt certain still that the mind
Is free to know or not.

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Unpacking Perceptions

It’s another busy installation week at the Museum in preparation for Thursday’s opening of Perceptions of Promise: Biotechnology, Society and Art. All hands are on deck and a team of visiting artists are hard at work installing this extraordinary exhibition.

Here’s a peek behind the scenes…

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On the Museum’s Front Doorstep…

McMaster is the first university in Canada to have its campus walkways mapped by Google’s Street View project, Now, virtual tourists can navigate their way around campus roads, bike paths and trails, without leaving home. Finding campus destinations, like the Museum of Art has never been so easy! Check out McMaster on Google Street View

Here are a few other places online that the McMaster Museum of Art façade has been spotted recently…

…in a McMaster Society of Off-Campus Students Promo Video
…in a McMaster student and Parkour Club member’s video 
…and the Gaudier-Brzeska Birdbath on our front lawn continues to be a photo favourite. Here’s a excellent seasonal shot of it by Kenneth Moyle.

Birdbath. Photo © Kenneth Moyle

Talk: 21st Century Indigenous Perspectives

Sa Ga Yeath Qua Pieth Tow, King of the Maquas (Mohawk), oil painting by John Verelst, Library and Archives Canada/John Petre collection/C-092418-19k/. Acquired with a special grant from the Canadian Government in 1977

The McMaster Museum of Art presents
HOME AND AWAY: 21st Century Indigenous Perspectives on 18th Century
Indigenous Portraits
Lunchtime Talk and Q&A
by
Rick Monture, Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University
&
Alice Te Punga Somerville, School of Maori Studies and the English Programme, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Tuesday October 25, 12:30 – 1:20 pm

Visiting scholar Alice Te Punga Somerville will begin this discussion, inspired by the portraits of Maori peoples currently on view in Museum’s exhibition First Contact? Artists of the Cook Voyages. McMaster’s own Rick Monture will then continue the conversation in Sherman gallery, examining the “Four Kings”, the earliest full length portrait paintings of North American Indigenous peoples.

Join us for this talk, presented as a complement to the Museum’s The Long 18th century Project and the upcoming John Douglas Taylor conference at McMaster University.

Admission is Free.

The Four Kings at McMaster

Among the jewels on view now at the McMaster Museum of Art are the Four Kings painted in 1710 by John Verelst, a Dutch artist at the court of Queen Anne of England. The portraits are the earliest full-length oil paintings of North American Indigenous peoples. Here’s a great video about the paintings:

“The Chiefs (sachems) Ho Nee Yeath Taw No Row (baptized John), Sa Ga Yeath Pieth Tow (baptized Brant), and Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Row (baptized Hendrick) of the Iroquoian Confederacy, and Mahican Chief Etow Oh Koam (baptized Nicholas), were selected to represent at the royal meeting with Queen Anne. The so-called “Four Kings” sought to solidify an alliance with England and military aid against the French. The Chiefs stand in an imagined North American landscape and are dressed in scarlet cloaks with gold borders, made for them soon after their arrival in London. Items belonging to Iroquois culture such as clan totems – the bear, wolf, and turtle – and the belts decorated with moose hair or porcupine quills, the beaded moccasins and the ball club are also featured in the portraits. Presented as the top ranking member of the group, Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Row is the only one wearing a complete English outfit. His wampum belt, used to commemorate treaties and historical events, shows the importance of his diplomatic position.”

- excerpt from the Virtual Museum of Canada text by Sarah Wilkinson

Tony Scherman Talk at McMaster, September 29

Check out this great 2010 interview with Tony Scherman (Magenta TV, 2010)

The dynamic, irrepressible and immensely talented Canadian artist
Tony Scherman will speak at the McMaster Museum of Art
Thursday, September 29 from 6-7:30 pm.

For more than thirty years, Scherman has painted exclusively in encaustic medium, the art of painting with hot wax, and he is one of the most provocative practitioners of this challenging art form. Scherman’s remarkable practice has moved through a variety of subjects over the years. His recent work focuses heavily on major historical events, such as the French Revolution or events in pop culture, and generally is created in very definitive series, entailing exhaustive research. Several of these series rely heavily on the genre of portraiture, of which Scherman is a master practitioner.

This talk is presented as a complement to the exhibition Rising to the Occasion: the Long 18th Century, on view at McMaster until November 5, 2011, which includes Scherman’s encaustic painting Napoleon, 2007-2010, from the series About 1789, and is included in the McMaster School of the Arts Visiting Artist Talks series.

Tony Scherman (Canadian, born 1950), Napoleon, 2007-2010, from the series About 1789, encaustic on canvas, courtesy of the artist and Georgia Scherman Projects

For more information about Tony Scherman, visit www.tonyscherman.com
or check out some of the great press about him, posted by the Georgia Scherman Projects. He will be having a solo exhibition there October 20 – November 26, 2011.

- mcmaster museum of art

Lifelong Learning Week at McMaster

Tour of Cadenza exhibition at McMaster Museum of Art for Life Long Learning Week 2011. Photo courtesy of Sarah-Louise Barton, Adult Basic Education Association

The McMaster Museum of Art has been participating in Lifelong Learning Week since its inception. Since 2004, the Adult Basic Education Association has organized Lifelong Learning Week a week of free learning events offered to people of all ages throughout Hamilton and the surrounding area.

This year at the MMA we expanded our activities to include not one but 4 special tours – each day exploring a different gallery in the Rising to the Occasion: The Long 18th Century project. The response has been terrific, attracting audiences from campus, the Hamilton Community, and beyond, and discussions following the tours have led to some wonderful discoveries (more on that in a future post – but for the moment suffice it to say that the McMaster University Libraries are a wealth of Captain Cook archival material.)

For the final Museum tour, tomorrow at 12:30, Nicole Knibb the MMA Education Coordinator will take visitors through The ‘Floating’ Urbanities of Utamaro and Hogarth: Pictures for Women?, the exhibition curated by Mark Cheetham. Don’t miss it!

Tour at McMaster Museum of Art for Life Long Learning Week 2011. Photo courtesy of Sarah-Louise Barton, Adult Basic Education Association

Tour at McMaster Museum of Art for Life Long Learning Week 2011. Photo courtesy of Sarah-Louise Barton, Adult Basic Education Association