Summer Exhibitions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frederic Marlett Bell-Smith, Vermillion Lakes, Banff, North West Territories, 1887, watercolour on paper.

Collection of the Glenbow Museum.

 

Vistas: Artists on the Canadian Pacific Railway

June 25 to September 19, 2010

Opening Reception: Friday, June 25 at 8 p.m.

 

Talk/Tours with Terry Fenton: Painting Vistas, Sunday, July 4 at 2 p.m.
Photographing Vistas, Sunday, July 25 at 2 p.m.

 

Envisioning a new nation spanning the continent, Sir John A. Macdonald promised a railway link to the Pacific Ocean if British Columbia joined the Confederation of Canadian provinces. As a result, corporate interests built the Canadian Pacific Railway, with assistance from the Canadian government.

 

Vistas: Artists on the Canadian Pacific Railway, features a comprehensive body of work representing 20 artists who travelled west, courtesy of William Cornelius Van Horne and the CPR. They were seeking to incorporate the western landscape image within the expression of an emerging national identity based on images of the land.

 

Combining his interest in art with his understanding of the importance of advertising, Van Horne encouraged several prominent artists and photographers to capture the beauty of the Canadian West. Many of them were founding members of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, established in 1880.

 

As builder and later President of the CPR, Van Horne provided such perks as free rail passage, temporary railcar studios, accommodation at mountain lodges, and the promotion of the artists’ work at international exhibits. Many of these pictures would end up in the private collections of the CPR’s corporate elite.

 

Vistas features more than 100 artworks and photographs from the permanent collection of the Glenbow Museum, and from other public and private collections in Canada and the United States. Many of these works have not been seen for decades. Images expressing the CPR’s vision of a sprawling new Canada are featured in this sweeping exhibition. It is a stunning body of artwork, the first to reveal the Canadian West as a desirable, majestic and awe-inspiring destination.

 

Artists in the exhibition include: Frederic Marlett Bell-Smith, Albert Bierstadt, William Brymner, Forshaw Day, John Colin Forbes, John Arthur Fraser, Robert Gagen, John Hammond, Thomas Mower Martin, Lucius O’Brien, Edward Roper, Cleveland Rockwell, Sir William Cornelius Van Horne, and photographer William McFarlane Notman.

 

Vistas: Artists on the Canadian Pacific Railway was guest-curated for the Glenbow by well-known Canadian art historian and curator Roger Boulet.

This exhibition has been organized and circulated by the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. This project has been made possible in part through a contribution from the Museums Assistance Program, Department of Canadian Heritage.

 

Exposition organisée et circulée par le musée Glenbow de Calgary, Alberta, au Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible en partie grâce d’une contribution du Programme d’aide aux musées du ministère du Patrimoine canadien.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above: Attrib. to James Watson (1890–1930) (Tlingit), Untitled

(two figure model totem) c. 1925, Carved and painted wood.

Collection of the Museum of Vancouver.

 

Carving and Commerce: Model Totem Poles 1880-2010

June 25 to September 12, 2010

 

Curators’ Talk/Tour with Michael Hall and Pat Glascock: Friday, June 25 at 7 p.m.

 

In the late 19th century, a handful of First Nations artisans from southeastern Alaska and western British Columbia began carving small totem poles for sale and trade. By the early 20th century, model totems had become the most popular souvenirs purchased by tourists exploring the Pacific Northwest. As the decade of the 1940s unfolded, First Nations people far from the Northwest began carving and painting totems for sale in roadside trading posts from Ottawa to Miami. By mid-century, Boy Scouts and adult hobby crafters throughout North America were creating poles in a bewildering array of inventive and eccentric personal styles. Today, a new generation of First Nations carvers in the Pacific Northwest has reclaimed the totem tradition and brought it to a growing fine art commerce based in galleries and museums worldwide.

 

Despite their popular appeal, model totem poles have rarely been discussed as meaningful cultural artifacts or as serious works of art. Anthropologists have typically viewed them as ethnographically irrelevant — tribal productions compromised by the curio commerce for which they were created. Similarly, collectors and curators from the art establishment have generally dismissed them as a form of kitsch. Still, a serious study of model totem poles suggests that their persistence in the cultural, political, aesthetic and spiritual commerce of the modern world is far from coincidental.

 

This exhibition, drawn from public and private collections across the continent, takes the first comprehensive look at the many forms of model totem poles produced between 1880 and 2010. Some 200 carvings are presented here in an inclusive way that acknowledges their historic voices as artifacts, fine art, folk art, or even as simple curiosities. Beyond these categorizations, however, the majority of the works in this exhibition speak eloquently as evolving expressions of FirstNations identity. They are containers of memory for communities that have experienced rapid social and political change. Additionally, the model totems gathered in this gallery express a durable mythos deeply etched into the national psyche of Canadians and Americans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nicola Valley Institute of Technology by Busby Perkins &

Will architects. Photo by Nic Lehoux and Marco Polo.

 

41° to 66°: Regional Responses to Sustainable Architecture in Canada

June 11 to October 3, 2010

Opening Reception: Friday, June 25 at 8 p.m.

 

Curators’ Talk/Slide Show: Saturday, June 26 at 2 p.m.

 

Climate and geography present particular challenges to architectural projects. This exhibition includes scale models and photographs of contemporary buildings designed for Canadian climes, from latitudes 41° to 66°. Curated by architectural professors John McMinn and Marco Polo, it is a modified version of the official Canadian representation at the 2008 Venice Biennale.

The exhibition has been organized and is being circulated by Cambridge Galleries, Cambridge, Ontario. The show’s opening at the Mendel Art Gallery coincides with the 2010 conference of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and the Saskatchewan Association of Architects in Saskatoon, June 24 to 26.

 

41° to 66° celebrates Canadian architecture with particular attention to regional influences and sustainable design. The show’s premise is that contemporary building strategies are responsive to local conditions, including climate, geography, and cultural heritage.

 

The featured building projects included in the exhibition represent six distinct climatic, cultural and geographic regions of Canada: Arctic, West Coast, Mountain, Prairie, Continental, and Atlantic. Regional characteristics and requirements, when combined with contemporary technological building practice, result in diverse, highly particularized architectures. Images of intriguing new buildings are juxtaposed, in the exhibition, with such indigenous structures as Inuit igloos, Haida longhouses, Plains tipis and Prairie grain elevators and stone houses of Quebec.

 

41° to 66° illustrates that architects are looking to historical and regional responses for answers to questions of sustainable design.

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Upcoming Exhibitions