ROM Mounts Soulful Caribana Show
The ROM will be jumping tonight at the kick off of From the Soul, a Scotiabank Caribana art exhibit that lays claim to the title of Canada’s largest ever juried display of works by African Canadian artists. Graphic and colourful, the 170 works by 50 artists were pulled together by curator Joan Butterfield (above with work by Ashley McKenzie-Barnes, top, and Rachel Natalie Rawlins), a festival director and chair of the Association of African-Canadian Artists.
Piped-in soca and calypso music set the appropriate tone as Joan walked me through the show earlier today. All of the work on display is new and has been created expressly for this exhibition. “I usually compose a short poem that defines the theme but this year I wanted to let the artists just do their own thing, I wanted them to paint from the soul,” she explains.
Butterfield selected the work from about 200 submissions. “The artists paint on canvas, whereas this whole room is MY canvas. I’m painting the room with the artworks,” she says.
Lords Know Why Culture Changes
Barry Lord literally wrote the book on museum planning — 1983’s Planning Our Museums was the first text of its kind and it launched the author and his editor, wife and business partner, Gail Dexter Lord, on a hugely successful international career planning and advising museums and galleries around the globe. In the ensuing 27 years, Lord Cultural Resources has consulted on 17,000 cultural institutions in 45 countries, including Toronto’s own Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, which is where I interviewed Barry, left (with David LaChappelle’s Lady Gaga: Electric Chair, 2009, courtesy of the artist and Fred Torres Collaborations), and where the Lords’ latest book, Artists, Patrons and the Public: Why Culture Changes, will be launched on Thursday.
Lord Cultural Resources is based in Toronto with offices in New York, Paris and Madrid plus project offices in Beijing and Bahrain. The company’s global ambitions could not have flowered at a better time; while Toronto has undergone a spectacular cultural renaissance during the past decade, other cities large and small are equally determined to compete in the cultural marketplace and that has meant lots of work for the Lords.
Surprise Serenade At Fort York
The RCMP Musical Ride touched down in Toronto yesterday and generously provided a free afternoon performance at Fort York National Historic Site to the delight of a small crowd. The band rehearsed in the tree-lined Garrison Common before moving inside to perform within the fort’s walls.
Photo by www.peterkburian.com
ROM Artifacts Inspire Museum Dances
The CanAsian International Dance Festival moves into the Royal Ontario Museum this weekend and next transforming select galleries into glorious site-specific performance spaces. Curated by CanAsian’s Artistic Director Denise Jujiwara, each of the four commissioned companies was invited to choose a space or artifact as the inspiration for a new original dance work.
Vancouver’s Moving Dragon (dancer/choreographers Chengxin Wei and Jessica Jone, above) sought out Toronto-based composer Michael Vincent to score their 15-minute piece; written for percussion ensemble with taped choir, the music will be performed live by Toronto’s TorQ Percussion Quartet (tonight at 7 pm and Saturday and Sunday at 2 pm, free with admission to the ROM).
Heritage Walk Season Begins in Scarborough
The weather forecast for Saturday has improved considerably and Scott Woodland, for one, couldn’t be happier about it. A director of the Scarborough Historical Society, Woodland will leading the Thomson Pioneer Settlement walk May 1 beginning at 1:30 pm: it’s the first Heritage Toronto Walk of the season, one of dozens of free, real-time explorations of the city’s present and past.
A public school teacher and committed history buff, Woodland, above centre, is an expert on the early days of Scarborough and its founding family, the Thomsons. “David and Mary Thomson were the first European settlers to be given a land grant in the area [around 1798] although there had been native villages on the site going back about 800 years,” says Woodland.
