The Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion for Peace at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Photo: Marc Cramer.
Our editors’ weekly roundup of Canadian art news.
Montreal’s Joyce Yahouda Gallery will be closing its physical space in the Belgo Building. Yahouda, who was nominated for gallery owner of the year at the Gala des Arts Visuels in 2011 and won the award in 2012, will continue working as a curator and consultant, with collaborations and temporary projects. Yahouda represented artists including Paul Wong, Julie Tremble and Andrea Szilasi, and the gallery has been housed in the Belgo since 2003.
The Canada Council for the Arts has received an exceptionally high response to its New Chapter funding program, which marked the 150th anniversary of Confederation. As director and CEO Simon Brault remarked in his address at the annual public meeting, “the proposals we received totalled more than $440 million”—which is equivalent to all of the projects funded by the Council over the past eight years. Fifty-two projects were ultimately funded, with grants from $50,000 to $375,000, which means that the success rate was notably low: barely 10 per cent. Also discussed at the meeting: the Council’s plans to invest $88.5 million in the arts over the next five years, and their increasing emphasis on digital technology.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has created a new Art and Health Advisory Committee, which will bring together researchers and experts in education, art, medicine and more. The committee will be chaired by Rémi Quirion, Quebec’s chief scientist and chair of the three Fonds de recherche du Québec. “I’m convinced that art is good for you, and we intend to prove it scientifically,” said Nathalie Bondil, director general and chief curator of the museum, in a press release. The MMFA already has a dedicated space for art education and therapy: the Michel de la Chenelière International Atelier for Education and Art Therapy, housed within the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion for Peace.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, with the Conseil des arts de Montréal, has announced that Ari Bayuaji has been selected for the Impressions artist residency, which will bring an artist into the museum for a month to challenge “the Western categorization of fine and decorative arts versus everyday objects by creating works that fall between these two categories, thus giving viewers the opportunity to question their assumptions.” Bayuaji, who was born in Indonesia, often works in sculpture, and has shown at galleries including Galerie René Blouin in Montreal and Redbase Foundation in Indonesia.
Scandinavian painting fans will be pleased to hear that the National Gallery of Canada has acquired Vilhelm Hammershøi’s Sunshine in the Drawing Room (1910). Hammershøi, one of Denmark’s most celebrated painters, captures his Copenhagen studio in the work, which is the first work by Hammershøi in the gallery’s collection. “The Gallery’s acquisition of Sunshine in the Drawing Room fills a gap in our European collection for the period around 1900,” said Paul Lang, chief curator of the NGC, in a press release. The work will be put on view in the gallery immediately.
