Images clockwise from left: Toronto’s Gardiner Museum. Photo: Smart Destinations via Wikimedia Commons; Daniel Patterson, winner of Founding Chairman Award, with Murray and Marvelle Koffler, Tiana Koffler Boyman and Marc Boyman. Photo: Sean Howard; Wanda Nanibush. Photo: Nadya Kwandibens, Red Works Studio.
Our editors’ weekly roundup of Canadian art news.
The National Gallery of Canada’s director and CEO, Marc Mayer, announced on Thursday that Luce Lebart has been appointed director of the Canadian Photography Institute. Lebart is currently the director of collections and curator of the Société française de photographie in Paris, and she will assume her new position on August 29, 2016. The development of the CPI was announced in 2015, and its first exhibition, “Cutline: The Photography Archives of The Globe and Mail,” opened in Toronto earlier this year.
The Canada Council for the Arts announced their 2016 prize winners on Tuesday. Two artists were recognized with Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Awards, which are annual prizes worth $15,000 for “outstanding artistic achievement by Canadian mid-career artists” in various disciplines. North Bay–based artist Duane Linklater was awarded the prize for media arts; Vancouver-based artist Cedric Bomford won the visual-arts prize.
Wanda Nanibush has been hired as the assistant curator of Canadian and Indigenous art at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. Nanibush is an Anishinabe-kwe writer, curator and organizer. Her past curatorial projects include “KWE: The work of Rebecca Belmore” at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery in Toronto, “Sovereign Acts” at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery and “Mapping Resistances,” a performance event in Peterborough. Nanibush begins at the AGO on July 18.
The Aimia | AGO Photography Prize announced the winners of the 2016 Aimia | AGO Photography Prize Scholarship Program on Wednesday. The annual scholarship awards winners with $7,000 toward tuition for their final year of undergraduate study at one of the 15 participating post-secondary institutions. Catherine Canac-Marquis of Concordia University, Jeff Chiu of Ryerson University and Alexia-Leana Kokozaki of the University of Ottawa were this year’s winners. An honourable mention prize of $1,000 was awarded to Andi Icaza Largaespada of Simon Fraser University’s School for Contemporary Arts.
Five artworks were announced as finalists for the 2016 Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award on Tuesday. Now in its 11th year, the Masterworks Award is the largest annual award to any work of art in Nova Scotia. Each of the finalists will receive $3,000 for being short-listed, while the winner will receive the $22,000 grand prize, which will be announced at a gala in November. Representing the visual arts, Ursula Johnson is one of the finalists for her work Mi’kwite’tmn (Do You Remember), which blends basket-weaving with performance and craft, and was exhibited at Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery in 2014.
Winners were announced for the 2016 Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition Awards on July 8. Japneet Saini was awarded Best of Exhibition, which includes a $5,500 prize and a one-year membership to CARFAC Ontario; the Founding Chairman’s Award, which also offers a $5,500 prize and a one-year membership to CARFAC Ontario, went to Daniel Paterson and the Best of Student prize went to Kaley Bowers. The awards distributed more than $30,000 in cash and in-kind prizes, and were juried by a range of arts professionals including gallerist Marianne Katzman, Toronto Arts Council visual/media arts officer Peter Kingstone and Canadian Art’s managing editor Rosie Prata.
The Gardiner Museum in Toronto has been awarded a $25,000 Seed Grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, which will allow the museum to offer free programming to the public for the rest of this summer. This announcement comes shortly after the museum announced that admission would be free for visitors 18 and under and the launch of the Community Arts Space at the museum.
