Cineplex is launching a series of art films across Canada starting with A Night at the Louvre: Leonardo da Vinci on Sept. 16. Guided by curators Vincent Delieuvin and Louis Frank, this exhibition celebrated da Vinci on the 500th anniversary of his death and recorded more than a million viewers at the Louvre in 2019. The fall season will also see Maverick Modigliani, Secret Impressionists, Frida Kahlo and Botticelli: Florence and the Medici. For participating locations and showtimes, go here.
September is the Month of the Artist in Alberta, the only province to dedicate a month to celebrate artists. The month aligns this year with Alberta Culture Days, which provides events and activities, in person and online, across the province. Some 13,300 artists live in Alberta (eight per cent of all artists in Canada), according to an analysis by Hill Strategies of the 2016 census. And in 2017, the visual/applied arts and live performance industries contributed approximately $1.3 billion and nearly 20,000 jobs to the Alberta economy. Download a day-by-day event calendar.
Artist Anthony Joseph is reclaiming a part of Black history during the Vancouver Mural Festival. His mural, on Union Street next to the Dunsmuir Viaduct, is a colourful tribute to Hogan's Alley, a thriving Black community demolished to make way for the viaducts connecting downtown with East Vancouver. "The idea of the mural is very much to bring a spotlight and to pay tribute to not only the neighbourhood of Strathcona, a.k.a. Black Strathcona that was Hogan's Alley, but to pay tribute to the people who lived here," Joseph told CBC News. He is one of four artists in the five-year-old festival who identify as Black, a record number for the event.
CBC News is reporting that the man at the centre of allegations of sexual harassment at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg has resigned. It says the man, who worked with visitors since 2016, left the museum as of Aug. 19. It also reports the man's direct supervisor stepped down in August. The news comes less than two months after five current and former staff members came forward to CBC News alleging they had been sexually harassed. The museum, which has been embroiled in controversy in recent months, recently released the report of an independent review that found systemic racism at the national museum.
The Banff Centre invites applications for an online program that runs Nov. 9 to Nov. 27. Soft Power allows visual artists to explore connections between art, nation states, data and propaganda. "Together we will examine how visual culture, contemporary art and architecture are employed in the construction of national identity, economic systems and ideas of collectivity and exclusivity." The faculty includes Richard Ibghy, Marilou Lemmons, Jasmina Cibic and Hajra Waheed. The deadline is Sept. 30. Learn more here.
Blake Senini (photo by Shamas Malik)
Alberta sculptor Blake Senini's outdoor sculpture, Drama Queen, has been unveiled at a new high-rise development in Calgary's inner city Beltline district. The development, at 510 12th Ave. S.W., also features work by Alexander Caldwell and Brad Harms. Drama Queen began as a photo of a raven on a tree branch outside Senini's studio. He made a template of the bird's silhouette and carved it repeatedly, layering each version over the previous, while slightly twisting them to create a column that was later cast in aluminum.
Megan Gnanasihamany, curator in residence at Edmonton artist-run centre Latitude 53 from until Oct. 7, will research the possibility of a curatorial practice built on the theoretical framework of degrowth and abolition. Gnanasihamany will seek out artists exploring concepts of looting and theft, state violence, artistic labour, abolition and capitalism, as well as non-artists who want to work together on the project. Gnanasihamany is a gig economy worker, artist, writer and curator. She holds a BFA from the University of Alberta.
Henry Heng Lu
Henry Heng Lu, the curator of Centre A in Vancouver, has taken on an additional role as interim executive director while the gallery searches for a permanent executive director. Prior to joining Centre A last year, he served as the artistic director of the Modern Fuel artist-run centre in Kingston, Ont. He holds a Master's degree in visual studies from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Arts in arts management from the University of Toronto Scarborough. Centre A is a public art gallery for contemporary Asian and Asian diasporic arts and culture.
Sources: Cineplex, Alberta Government, CBC News, Banff Centre, Herringer Kiss Gallery, Latitude 53, Centre A
