Clockwise from top left: A view of Âjagemô, the Canada Council's 3,000-square-foot exhibition space in Ottawa; Jon Rafman, Future Generation Prize Shortlist (installation view), 2014. Rafman is one of the finalists for the 2015 Sobey Art Award; Alana Traficante, new administrative director of Hamilton Artists Inc.; Scott Miller Berry, recipient of the Margo Bindhardt and Rita Davies Award. Photo: Henry Chan; Chloe Lewis, new director of Eastern Edge Gallery.
Our editors’ weekly roundup of Canadian art news.
On Wednesday, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and the Sobey Art Foundation announced the five finalists for the 2015 Sobey Art Award. Lisa Lipton (Atlantic), Jon Rafman (Quebec), Abbas Akhavan (Ontario), Sarah Anne Johnson (Prairies and the North) and Raymond Boisjoly (West Coast and the Yukon) will be considered for the prize, which will be announced on October 28. A prize of $50,000 will go to the winner with $10,000 awarded to each of the other finalists and $500 to each of the longlisted artists.
Chloe Lewis has been hired as the director of Eastern Edge Gallery in St. John’s. A graduate of Emily Carr University of Art and Design, she has worked as part of the artist duo Lewis and Taggart for the past decade, and co-founded the Museum of Longing and Failure. She replaces Mary MacDonald, who joined the artist-run centre in 2012.
On Wednesday morning, the Canada Council for the Arts released details about its significantly altered funding model, which was first announced in January. Rather than maintaining their 147 discipline-specific programs, the Canada Council has whittled down the system into six national, non-disciplinary programs.
Hamilton Artists Inc. announced that Alana Traficante will assume the administrative director role at the end of June. She joins Caitlin Sutherland, programming director at the artist-run centre, and replaces Stefan Hancherow, who became the interim administrative director at Hamilton Artists Inc. in 2014, and was recently announced as the project director of Toronto’s Feature Contemporary Art Fair.
Last week, Scott Miller Berry, executive director of the Images Festival from 2005 to 2015, was awarded the Margo Bindhardt and Rita Davies Award, a moneyed prize worth $10,000 from the Toronto Arts Foundation. Awarded biannually, the prize supports the cultural leadership of administrators, artists and others.
Rebecca Taylor Duclos, formerly dean of graduate studies at the Art Institute of Chicago, will join Concordia University in Montreal this summer as dean of the fine-arts faculty, which is a five-year appointment. Beyond her academic career, Duclos has worked in programming and special projects at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, the Design Exchange and the Textile Museum of Canada.
