Our editors’ weekly roundup of Canadian art news.
The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal has announced some of the artists who will be participating in the 2017 exhibition “Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything,” which will open at the MAC in November and then tour internationally. Musicians Jean Leloup, Ariane Moffatt and Lou Doillon will be among the 25 or more interdisciplinary artists included in the exhibition, and they will be revisiting and covering Cohen’s songs, which visitors can listen to throughout the show’s run. The show will be on view from November 9, 2017, to April 1, 2018, as part of the programming for Montréal’s 375th anniversary.
The Remai Modern announced on Wednesday that it will be hosting the retrospective “Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World” in 2018. The Remai will be the only Canadian venue for the international exhibition, which is organized by the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. “This inaugural programming announcement is particularly significant for the new Remai Modern,” said Gregory Burke, the gallery’s director and CEO in a press release. “As a Cherokee artist, Jimmie Durham has for four decades been at the forefront of developments in contemporary art, with works that deftly traverse cultural boundaries.” The retrospective will include some 200 works by the Durham, who is currently based in Berlin and Naples, spanning a period from 1970 to the present.
Two Canadian artists, Abbas Akhavan and Jon Rafman, will be participating in the Sharjah Biennial 13, titled Tamawuj, which opens in March 2017 in the United Arab Emirates. Akhavan and Rafman are among the 60 artists featured in the first portion of the biennial, which also includes artists Allora and Calzadilla, Yto Barrada, Harun Farocki and Stéphanie Saadé. This edition of the Sharjah Biennial, which was started in 1993, will be curated by Beirut-based Christine Tohmé, the founding director of Ashkal Alwan, the Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts.
Nicolas Grenier won the Prix Pierre-Ayot and Aude Moreau was awarded the Prix Louis-Comtois by the Contemporary Art Galleries Association (AGAC), in partnership with the City of Montreal. The Prix Pierre-Ayot, worth $5,000, is dedicated to emerging artists under the age of 35, while the Prix Louis-Comtois, which awards $7,500, recognizes artists who have distinguished themselves in Montreal over the last 15 years. Both winners also receive $2,500 towards the organization of a solo exhibition in Montreal, and the city will acquire a work by each of the winners. The awards were announced at an event at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal on December 7.
The Inuit Art Centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery received a $500,000 donation from the RBC Foundation on Wednesday. The IAC will house the WAG’s collection of contemporary Inuit art—which with 13,000 pieces is the largest in the world—and also offer studio space, programming and educational spaces. Construction on the four-level 40,000-square-foot building is slated to begin in 2017. The WAG has been fundraising for the structure, which has an estimated cost of $65 million. The Winnipeg Foundation, federal government, municipal government and other sources have all pledged donations, and the provincial government is reviewing the decision to match the federal donation of $15 million.
