A view of the Berthe Morisot exhibition at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec earlier in 2018. Photo: Idra Labrie, MBAQ / Facebook.
Morisot Mania
“Berthe Morisot: Woman Impressionist” at Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec is a finalist for Apollo’s Exhibition of the Year. The UK art publication has put the Quebec City exhibition up against “Bruegel” at Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, “Charles I: King and Collector” at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, “Joan Jonas” at Tate Modern in London, “Delacroix (1798–1863)” at the Louvre in Paris and “Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The winner will be announced later this month. (Apollo)
That same Morisot exhibition, which debuted in Quebec City and of which the MNBAQ is a co-organizer, is now also getting accolades at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Hyperallergic, Artsy, the New York Times and Forbes have all noted the show’s importance in positioning this French artist more firmly in the art historical canon, and putting her in the same league as male Impressionist peers. The show is also due to travel to other co-organizing institutions the Dallas Museum of Art and the Musée d’Orsay in 2019.
Staffing Changes
cheyanne turions is the new curator at SFU Galleries. According to a gallery Facebook post, she is due to join SFU in mid-December. She arrives from the Vancouver Art Gallery, where she has been director of education and public programs.
Jacqueline Bell has promoted to curator at the Walter Phillips Gallery. Bell has been with the Banff Centre gallery since 2014, most recently serving as acting curator. She officially started her new position November 1.
Award Wins
The Ontario Association of Art Gallery Awards have been released. Among the big winners are: “Take Care” at the Blackwood Gallery for Exhibition of the Year Budget over $50,000; “Migrating the Margins” at Art Gallery of York University for Exhibition of the Year Budget over $20,000 (Thematic); and “Deanna Bowen: On Trial The Long Doorway” at Mercer Union for Exhibition of the Year Budget over $20,000 (Monographic). A full list of winners is available on the OAAG website. (OAAG)
Geneviève Cadieux has won the Prix Paul-Émile Borduas. The $30,000 prize goes every year to a senior Quebec artist. (Canadian Art)
Emma Nishimura has won the Queen Sonja Print Award 2018. The Toronto artist received the international award at the Royal Academy of Arts in London earlier this month, and was chosen from 42 artists. The prize was juried by Tauba Auerbach, Lars Nittve and Mark Nash. (press release)
The annual Business for the Arts Awards have been announced. Nathalie Bondil, director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, received the Peter Herrndorf Arts Leadership Award. Philanthropist Margaret McCain won the Edmund C. Bovey Award. And Ali Shivji received the Arnold Edinborough Award. (Business for the Arts)
Auction News
Multiple records were broken at Canada’s fall auctions this week. Among the records to fall was auction record for a Canadian print, broken by Kenojuak Ashevak‘s Enchanted Owl print at Waddington’s, E.J. Hughes’ auction record at Heffel, and Bertram Brooker‘s auction record at Consignor. (Canadian Art)
Tlingit, Nitinat, Northwest Coast, and Bella Coola cultural objects have been pulled from a Boston auction following protests. In all, Skinner auction house removed seven lots from its American Indian and ethnographic art sale, due to happen December 1. Jean-Luc Pierite, president of the board of directors of the North American Indian Centre of Boston, suggests the items, previously owned by the City of Medford, should be repatriated. He adds, in the Art Newspaper, “To sell these items for a short-term profit without proper consultation on repatriation is part of the troubling disregard for government-to-government relationships.” (Art Newspaper)
Museum and Institution Updates
Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre is due to open in Edmonton in late summer 2019. The collective-run centre focusing on Indigenous contemporary art will provide a physical space for the Ociciwan group’s ongoing programs and projects, which have since 2015 partnered to use other organizations’ venues. (Canadian Art)
The Glenbow Museum has announced the creation of a new Glenbow Western Research Centre. The centre is the result of a partnership with the University of Calgary and will open to the public in September 2019. Under the partnership, the Glenbow will move its substantial archival holdings—reportedly “Canada’s largest non-governmental archival repository”—to the University of Calgary library system. “This purpose-built facility will be located in the heart of the University of Calgary campus, at the Taylor Family Digital Library,” says a release. (press release)
It’s official: a group of museums is filing to intervene in a big Federal Court appeal. The Attorney General‘s appeal, if successful, may make it possible for museums to restore the flow of art donation holdings, upon which many of their collections rely, again, following a court case brought by Heffel to judge how Canadian cultural property law should be interpreted. “The Canadian Art Museum Directors Organization, which has helped lead the charge to intervene, said it did not want to comment before the Federal Court weighed in on its application,” says a report in the Globe and Mail. (Globe and Mail)
Remembrances
Montreal artist John Heward has died. The influential painter and sculptor passed away November 6, according to an obituary in the Montreal Gazette. Some of his work is still on exhibit at the Darling Foundry in Montreal. (Montreal Gazette)
Art writer Paul Duval championed Lawren Harris. “For more than half a century, influential art critic Paul Duval was the eloquent advocate, not just for Harris and his Group of Seven confrères, but for a broad spectrum of significant Canadian artists, from Quebec’s avant-garde Automatistes to the popular realist Ken Danby,” writes Martin Morrow in the Globe and Mail. Duval died earlier this year. (Globe and Mail)
