Remai Modern, Canada’s Museum of Modern Art Announces October 2017 Opening

×

Expand

Remai Modern

Canada’s museum of modern art, Remai Modern, will open to the public October 21, 2017 in Saskatoon. The launch aligns with the international trend of world-class museums opening in unexpected destinations.

The inaugural exhibition, Field Guide, curated by Executive Director & CEO, Gregory Burke, and Director of Programs & Chief Curator, Sandra Guimarães, will animate the entire building. Selected works from the museum’s collection will be displayed in dialogue with contemporary projects, commissions and installations by international and Canadian artists. Upon opening, Remai Modern will be an artist-centred institution that raises questions, inspires discussion, and enables transformative experiences among both local and global audiences.

Field Guide is not a thematic exhibition but rather a series of singular positions and coherent groupings of works that introduce Remai Modern’s program philosophy and direction, providing an open framework that invites consideration of a network of issues and questions impacting art and society today.

“The concept for Field Guide emerges from a set of questions we asked ourselves during the establishment of Remai Modern, including: What is modern? Can art confront reality? What is urgent and why? How will Indigeneity shape the future? And what role can be played by a new art museum opening in Saskatoon, Canada?” said Gregory Burke, Executive Director & CEO. “These questions, and others, will continue to inform the development of our programs, articulating a spirit of active engagement, curiosity and disruption.”

Rather than being a static display, the exhibition will change over time, creating new conversations and rethinking the idea of “modern” from multiple cultural, historic and contemporary positions. Accompanied by a strong focus on live and artist-driven programming, Field Guide introduces the museum as a dynamic field of relations.

The exhibition will be anchored by several major artist projects that propose new social, personal, and political engagements with the institution and its audiences. A full list of artists included in Field Guide will be announced in the fall and will feature emerging and established artists working in a wide variety of media and across disciplines.

New Collaborative Project by Tanya Lukin Linklater and Duane Linklater

As part of the opening program, renowned Ontario-based artists Tanya Lukin Linklater and Duane Linklater will introduce a new collaborative project in the Connect Gallery, Remai Modern’s free, ground-floor space sponsored by the TD Bank Group.

Responding to the museum’s positioning on the South Saskatchewan River, the artists are developing a physical and conceptual vessel to carry or hold Indigenous ideas, histories, objects and forms. Titled Determined by the river, the installation will be activated with selections from Remai Modern’s collection, as well as works the artists will bring to Saskatoon. The river has been a gathering place and catalyst for movement for millennia, and the artists see it as a way to imagine Indigenous presences in the past, in the now, and into the future — a continuance. Their project asks, “How are these continuous presences activated in relation to the site of the museum?”

The artists are also organizing a series of discursive events to accompany the installation, with contributions from Indigenous artists, filmmakers, curators, and writers, many of whom are based in Saskatoon, or have a relationship to Saskatchewan or the Prairies.

Debut of the Picasso Collection, Curated by Ryan Gander

Remai Modern is home to the world’s most comprehensive collection of Picasso linocuts, donated to the museum in 2012 by the Frank and Ellen Remai Foundation. The inaugural presentation of this collection will be curated by internationally renowned artist Ryan Gander.

Gander’s interest in the linocuts focuses on portraits, as a way to contemplate self-projection and self-image. For Gander, Picasso’s iconic persona makes it difficult to separate the artist’s work and life—they become one grand, extravagant self-portrait. Faces of Picasso: The collection selected by Ryan Gander, proposes that to understand Picasso, we have to understand his representation of the self.

While Picasso’s works line the gallery walls, the centre of the room will be held by Gander’s installation Fieldwork (2015), also recently donated by the Frank and Ellen Remai Foundation. Through a window, viewers are presented with a rotating display of idiosyncratic objects connected to the artist. This personal inventory blends biography, memory and fiction, with Gander’s distinctive sense of humour. Especially for this exhibition, Gander is producing a new object for the installation: a stack of drawings of every Picasso linocut in the museum’s collection. The drawings will also be reproduced in a publication, Picasso and I, offering an intimate catalogue of the collection as interpreted by Gander. Inexpensively produced and available at cost, the book aims to circumvent restrictions around reproductions of Picasso’s work, making the collection more accessible to all.

Critical Workshop by Thomas Hirschhorn

As part of Field Guide, Thomas Hirschhorn will produce an immersive project at Remai Modern, titled What I can learn from you. What you can learn from me. (Critical Workshop). In advance of the workshop, Hirschhorn will spend time in consultation with community groups and organizations in Saskatoon, conducting fieldwork and reaching out to “Teachers” and “Learners”—roles that can also be reversed. The artist will be onsite for the entirety of the workshop, from morning to evening, facilitating exchanges of knowledge, skills and histories between Saskatoon residents and visitors. The gallery will be transformed into a true “Workshop-Space,” with its own furniture, materials, tools and hardware, proposing its own organization and logic.

This project will be the first “Presence and Production” work realized by Hirschhorn in Canada. It continues the artist’s approach of constant onsite engagement, as developed in recent projects such as Flamme Éternelle (Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2014), and Gramsci Monument (produced by Dia Art Foundation and installed at Forest Houses in the Bronx, NY, 2013). These inclusive projects oppose hierarchies of culture and artistic value, encouraging unexpected encounters and critical social discourse. What I can learn from you. What you can learn from me. (Critical Workshop) closely aligns with Remai Modern’s direction as a museum rethinking the conditions for learning.

The Remai Modern Experience

Set where the South Saskatchewan River meets downtown Saskatoon, Remai Modern has a dramatic impact on the city’s skyline. Designed by architect Bruce Kuwabara, founding partner of renowned Canadian architectural firm KPMB, the structure features four cantilevered, horizontal spaces inspired by the low, flat topography of the surrounding Prairie landscape. Portions of the museum’s exterior are covered in a copper-coloured mesh screen created by James & Taylor, in a reference to the copper roof of Saskatoon’s landmark Bessborough Hotel.

In addition to acting as a gathering place for the local community, the museum will be an attraction for visiting Canadians, international travellers, and the global art community. The spaces of Remai Modern are designed for dynamic experiences and will allow for world-class art to be showcased around every corner. The museum will boast intimate spaces and dramatic expanses, along with an atrium and outdoor terraces offering stunning views of the river and sky. The ground floor will feature large-scale art commissions, a changing gallery space, and an active learning studio, as well as a fireplace and open lounge areas, an art and design store, and a restaurant.

On the second and third floors, visitors will find Remai Modern’s main programming spaces including collection galleries, a Picasso gallery and sizeable spaces for temporary and internationally touring exhibitions.

Other areas of the building include a 150-seat lecture theatre, and impressive event and entertainment spaces, which will be used for performances, members’ nights, private rentals and community events.

The museum’s collection of nearly 8,000 works once resided inside popular local cultural centre, the Mendel Art Gallery, and features the foremost collection of Picasso linocuts (406) and 23 Picasso ceramics. Remai Modern builds on the region’s arts legacy created by the former Mendel Gallery and the Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops.

History and Context

Remai Modern is located in Treaty 6 Plains Cree territory and the traditional homeland of the Métis. The museum is informed by the rich history of the Prairies, including Indigenous artists and cultures, progressive political support for art, and unique modernist legacies.

In 1944, the province of Saskatchewan elected the first democratic-socialist government in North America, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. In 1948, the Saskatchewan Arts Board was founded to provide vital funding to artists in all disciplines. At the time, it was only the second agency of its kind in the world. In the 1950s and 60s, influential modern artists and critics flocked to the Emma Lake Artists' Workshops, just north of Saskatoon. Workshop leaders, including Clement Greenberg, Kenneth Noland, Barnett Newman, Donald Judd, Frank Stella, Anthony Caro and John Cage responded to the wilderness landscape and introduced new concepts. These retreats had a lasting impact on regional aesthetics, and fostered exchanges between Canadian artists and the international art world.

Remai Modern’s collection of nearly 8,000 works was developed by the Mendel Art Gallery, which opened in 1964 and closed in 2015. An important component of Field Guide will be the Mendel Gift, 13 paintings by Canadian and European modern artists—including Lawren Harris, Emily Carr, and David Milne—donated by Fred Mendel in 1965 and forming the nucleus of the Mendel Art Gallery’s collection.

About Frank and Ellen Remai

In 2011, Saskatoon entrepreneur and philanthropist Ellen Remai announced a donation of $30 million to the new museum on behalf of the Frank and Ellen Remai Foundation—to support construction and enhance the exhibition program. In recognition of this generosity, Saskatoon City Council unanimously voted to name the museum in Ellen Remai’s honor. In 2012, the Frank and Ellen Remai Foundation donated 405 linocuts by Pablo Picasso—the most comprehensive collection of its kind in the world—to Remai Modern. Art specialist and philanthropist Frederick Mulder complemented the gift in 2014, with the donation of an additional linocut and 23 ceramic pieces by the iconic modern artist.

Source: Reimai Modern