So far, professional staff at MAC Montreal have staged some temporary pickets, such as the one seen here. Photo: Instagram / @prosdumacmontreal, October 8.
So far this week, we noted that Luther Konadu won the Salt Spring National Art Prize. Here’s what else is happening:
Art and Labour
Professional staff at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal are set to strike. Roughly 30 or so curators, conservators and administrators at one of Canada’s leading contemporary art museums have announced they will strike and picket all day on on October 30. The workers have been without a contract since 2015. A union release says 50% of them are casual status, rather than permanent, and that wage increases lag far behind provincial averages. (emailed press release)
Did Gucci appropriate this Vancouver artist’s work? It certainly seems that way. Sharona Franklin, who has a disability, was contacted in May by a Gucci representative expressing interest in her jelly sculptures, which for Franklin reference treatments she has received for chronic illness. She signed a non-disclosure agreement and began conversations with the organization about how the sculptures were constructed and how long they took to make. Weeks later, she was told that due to budget concerns, someone in Europe would be making the jelly sculptures for Gucci instead. Gucci released images of its jelly sculptures on Instagram recently, and controversy has ensued. (Fashion, Globe and Mail)
A new study of Canada’s cultural labour market makes several recommendations. Among them: staff and board of directors in the cultural sector should all be trained on best practices related to diversity, inclusion and harassment prevention. The study also says that more help is needed to ensure self-employed cultural workers gain access to Employment Insurance benefits. More recommendations can be found in the study issued by the Cultural Human Resources Council. (report)
New Spaces for Art
The Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University has acquired three outdoor installations by artists Raven Chacon, Camille Georgeson-Usher and Ogimaa Mikana (Susan Blight and Hayden King). The installations were created for the recent exhibition “Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts,” curated by Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson. “Not only do these works at Queen’s demonstrate the vibrancy of Indigenous contemporary art today; each work also calls for further action: to read/learn Indigenous language, to reconnect with kin, and to resound across the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee lands Queen’s is situated upon,” says Robinson. (emailed press release).
The Kamloops Centre for the Arts Society (KCA) has made significant progress on its commitment to realizing a new centre in Kamloops. The case being made is that there is a strong demand for more cultural programming in Kamloops, where the available facilities are not meeting current needs. “The Society has made significant progress and we know time is of the essence. The Kamloops Recreation Master Plan has identified cultural infrastructure as the number one priority, so we believe it is both necessary and appropriate to ask for [City] Council’s intended direction at this time,” says chair of the KCA Board of Directors Norm Daley. (KCA).
International Showings
Canadian artists Libby Hague and Lyla Rye, and artist and curator Asma Mahmood, have been chosen to showcase their work in the Karachi Biennale. Curated by Muhammad Zeeshan, the 2019 biennial theme “is inspired by the ecological consequences of dense urbanization, underscoring the annihilation inflicted on ecosystems by man’s war of ambition with nature and the myriad of detrimental reactions by nature.” Hague will create a woodcut installation about a cautionary tale that takes place between two disasters and two visions of paradise. Rye is presenting a new video installation that examines our ambivalent attitude toward nature, referencing computer desktops and online nature videos that are used as meditation aids. Mahmood will share an essay “exploring the work of Canadian Indigenous artists and their response to climatic and urbanization challenges during one of the discursive sessions.” (Akimbo)
The exhibition “Canada and Impressionism: New Horizons” is closing soon at Kunsthalle München. Curated by the National Gallery’s curator of Canadian art Katerina Atanassova and featuring work by 36 artists, it is the first exhibition of Canadian Impressionism to tour Europe. Travelling to the Hermitage Foundation and the Fabre Museum next year, it will open at the National Gallery in Ottawa in fall 2020. (National Gallery of Canada)
Art Market News
The Contemporary Art Galleries Association announced its first Art Market Forum. Taking place in Montreal November 18 and 19, the forum will reflect on how digital developments affect the work of galleries, and generally, the art market. The Art Market Forum is aimed at gallerists and staff working in private galleries, as well as cultural workers interested in the art market. Among the speakers are New York dealer Elizabeth Dee, co-founder of the Independent. (AGAC)
Heffel’s upcoming live auction includes Picasso’s Femme au chapeau (1941), estimated at $8 million to $10 million. The oil-on-canvas work is from a private collection in Europe, and was last auctioned at Christie’s in London in 2002. It was one of the first works by Picasso to be exhibited in the United States in the 1950s. Femme au chapeau will be part of a live auction taking place November 20 in Toronto, also featuring works by Emily Carr, Joan Mitchell and others. (Heffel)
More artwork by the Canadian scientist who discovered insulin will be coming to auction this fall at Cowley Abbott. European Landscape was painted in 1925 during Frederick Banting’s trip to accept the Nobel Prize, and it is estimated at $20,000 to $30,000. The appearance of this lot follows the fall 2018 auction of a Banting painting for more than $300,000. This work, and others by Jean-Paul Lemieux and William Kurelek, among others, will go on auction in Toronto November 19. (Cowley Abbott)
Staffing Updates
The Cultural Human Resources Council announces Grégoire Gagnon as their new executive director. Gagnon is replacing Susan Annis, who is retiring after having worked for CHRC as executive director for more than 17 years. Gagnon has worked on the Labour Market Information Study of the Cultural Workforce, and has collaborated with CHRC on the Provincial-Territory Advisory Committee. (press release)
