Events by this organizer

Marcel Dzama’s delicate and fantastical drawings made with ink, watercolour paint and root beer catapulted the Winnipeg-born artist to international fame in the late 1990s. Since then, Dzama has relocated to Brooklyn, New York, expanding his practice to include performance, sculpture, and video. Ghosts of Canoe Lake: New Work by Marcel Dzama celebrates a new body of work inspired by the artist’s interest in Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, recalling as well his childhood spent in the landscape of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Featuring paintings, installation, and video, this is the first major exhibition of Dzama’s work in Canada in nearly a decade. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with Contemporary Calgary.

Bertram Brooker: When We Awake! examines the career of Bertram Brooker (1888–1955), the first Canadian artist to exhibit abstract paintings, in 1927. Curated by Michael Parke-Taylor, the exhibition is the first comprehensive presentation of Brooker’s oeuvre in almost half a century, gathering his diverse work in painting, drawing, and sculpture and highlighting his activities as one of the country’s leading art critics and journalists. The exhibition emphasizes Brooker’s variety in style and subject matter, and includes lyrical abstractions, exacting realistic nudes, geometric cubist still-lifes, and surreal graphic illustrations. The exhibition will offer a rare vantage point on a pivotal figure in Canadian cultural history.

Marcel Dzama’s delicate and fantastical drawings made with ink, watercolour paint and root beer catapulted the Winnipeg-born artist to international fame in the late 1990s. Since then, Dzama has relocated to Brooklyn, New York, expanding his practice to include performance, sculpture, and video. Ghosts of Canoe Lake: New Work by Marcel Dzama celebrates a new body of work inspired by the artist’s interest in Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, recalling as well his childhood spent in the landscape of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Featuring paintings, installation, and video, this is the first major exhibition of Dzama’s work in Canada in nearly a decade. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with Contemporary Calgary.

Bertram Brooker: When We Awake! examines the career of Bertram Brooker (1888–1955), the first Canadian artist to exhibit abstract paintings, in 1927. Curated by Michael Parke-Taylor, the exhibition is the first comprehensive presentation of Brooker’s oeuvre in almost half a century, gathering his diverse work in painting, drawing, and sculpture and highlighting his activities as one of the country’s leading art critics and journalists. The exhibition emphasizes Brooker’s variety in style and subject matter, and includes lyrical abstractions, exacting realistic nudes, geometric cubist still-lifes, and surreal graphic illustrations. The exhibition will offer a rare vantage point on a pivotal figure in Canadian cultural history.

Session One – May 5
Gently awaken your mind and body to the changing seasons with a specially designed program that combines stretching and core strengthening, meditation and mindful artmaking for a restorative creative reset.

Begin the day with stretching, strengthening, and yogic intention with registered yoga teacher Rina Morra. Following a light buffet-style lunch, Director of Creative Learning & Programs Anna Stanisz will lead participants in a practice of mindful art viewing and sketching to promote deep creative engagement.

Instructors
Rina Morra, Registered Yoga Teacher
Anna Stanisz, M.A. Art History, Director of Creative Learning & Programs, McMichael Canadian Art Collection

Session Two – June 9
As summer begins, tap into the abundant creative energy of the season with a contemplative retreat that combines gentle fitness, artmaking, nature and meditation.

In the morning, Alessandra Quattrociocchi, a personal trainer and owner of Bella Body Fitness, will lead a therapeutic Pilates and meditation session to calm the nervous system. Following a light buffet-style lunch, participants will go outside for an Art & Nature Meditation workshop, which integrates a Japanese-inspired shinrin-yoku (forest bathing) walk with artmaking led by Christina Kerr, a visual artist and arts educator.

Instructors
Alessandra Quattrociocchi, B.A. Kinesiology & Health Sciences, Certified Personal Training Specialist and Founder of Bella Body Fitness
Christina Kerr, B.F.A., Creative Learning Program Development Manager, McMichael Canadian Art Collection

People of the Watershed: Photographs by John Macfie includes more than 100 photographs taken by John Macfie (1925–2018), a settler trapline manager who worked in Northern Ontario in the 1950s and 1960s. Macfie travelled with a camera, recording life in Anishinaabe, Cree, and Oji-Cree communities during a period of intense and rapid change. The people and places of Attawapiskat, Sandy Lake, Mattagami, and other communities across the Hudson’s Bay watershed are revealed through his lens in ways that emphasize the warmth and continuity of community life. Curated by nîpisîhkopâwiyiniw (Willow Cree) curator, writer, journalist, cultural advocate, and commentator Paul Seesequasis, the exhibition centers the lives and resiliency of the Indigenous people represented, many of whom have been identified by Macfie and Seesequasis.

Part of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival

Join McMichael Associate Curator Emily Laurent Henderson for a curatorial talk featuring nîpisîhkopâwiyiniw (Willow Cree) exhibition guest curator, writer, cultural advocate, and Indigenous Archival Photo Project founder Paul Seesequasis. Seesequasis will discuss People of the Watershed: Photographs by John Macfie, the first museum exhibition of settler photographer and trapline manager John Macfie. For more than a decade, Macfie travelled across Northern Ontario photographing Anishinaabe, Cree, and Anisininew communities along the Hudson Bay Watershed. His photographs, taken in the 1950s and 1960s, record communities during a period of intense and rapid change. Seesequasis discusses the resilience and joy captured in Macfie’s photography of Indigenous communities during a time of cultural upheaval.

Marcel Dzama’s delicate and fantastical drawings made with ink, watercolour paint and root beer catapulted the Winnipeg-born artist to international fame in the late 1990s. Since then, Dzama has relocated to Brooklyn, New York, expanding his practice to include performance, sculpture, and video. Ghosts of Canoe Lake: New Work by Marcel Dzama celebrates a new body of work inspired by the artist’s interest in Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, recalling as well his childhood spent in the landscape of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Featuring paintings, installation, and video, this is the first major exhibition of Dzama’s work in Canada in nearly a decade. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with Contemporary Calgary.

Bertram Brooker: When We Awake! examines the career of Bertram Brooker (1888–1955), the first Canadian artist to exhibit abstract paintings, in 1927. Curated by Michael Parke-Taylor, the exhibition is the first comprehensive presentation of Brooker’s oeuvre in almost half a century, gathering his diverse work in painting, drawing, and sculpture and highlighting his activities as one of the country’s leading art critics and journalists. The exhibition emphasizes Brooker’s variety in style and subject matter, and includes lyrical abstractions, exacting realistic nudes, geometric cubist still-lifes, and surreal graphic illustrations. The exhibition will offer a rare vantage point on a pivotal figure in Canadian cultural history.

Session One – May 5
Gently awaken your mind and body to the changing seasons with a specially designed program that combines stretching and core strengthening, meditation and mindful artmaking for a restorative creative reset.

Begin the day with stretching, strengthening, and yogic intention with registered yoga teacher Rina Morra. Following a light buffet-style lunch, Director of Creative Learning & Programs Anna Stanisz will lead participants in a practice of mindful art viewing and sketching to promote deep creative engagement.

Instructors
Rina Morra, Registered Yoga Teacher
Anna Stanisz, M.A. Art History, Director of Creative Learning & Programs, McMichael Canadian Art Collection

Session Two – June 9
As summer begins, tap into the abundant creative energy of the season with a contemplative retreat that combines gentle fitness, artmaking, nature and meditation.

In the morning, Alessandra Quattrociocchi, a personal trainer and owner of Bella Body Fitness, will lead a therapeutic Pilates and meditation session to calm the nervous system. Following a light buffet-style lunch, participants will go outside for an Art & Nature Meditation workshop, which integrates a Japanese-inspired shinrin-yoku (forest bathing) walk with artmaking led by Christina Kerr, a visual artist and arts educator.

Instructors
Alessandra Quattrociocchi, B.A. Kinesiology & Health Sciences, Certified Personal Training Specialist and Founder of Bella Body Fitness
Christina Kerr, B.F.A., Creative Learning Program Development Manager, McMichael Canadian Art Collection

People of the Watershed: Photographs by John Macfie includes more than 100 photographs taken by John Macfie (1925–2018), a settler trapline manager who worked in Northern Ontario in the 1950s and 1960s. Macfie travelled with a camera, recording life in Anishinaabe, Cree, and Oji-Cree communities during a period of intense and rapid change. The people and places of Attawapiskat, Sandy Lake, Mattagami, and other communities across the Hudson’s Bay watershed are revealed through his lens in ways that emphasize the warmth and continuity of community life. Curated by nîpisîhkopâwiyiniw (Willow Cree) curator, writer, journalist, cultural advocate, and commentator Paul Seesequasis, the exhibition centers the lives and resiliency of the Indigenous people represented, many of whom have been identified by Macfie and Seesequasis.

Part of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival

People of the Watershed: Photographs by John Macfie includes more than 100 photographs taken by John Macfie (1925–2018), a settler trapline manager who worked in Northern Ontario in the 1950s and 1960s. Macfie travelled with a camera, recording life in Anishinaabe, Cree, and Oji-Cree communities during a period of intense and rapid change. The people and places of Attawapiskat, Sandy Lake, Mattagami, and other communities across the Hudson’s Bay watershed are revealed through his lens in ways that emphasize the warmth and continuity of community life. Curated by nîpisîhkopâwiyiniw (Willow Cree) curator, writer, journalist, cultural advocate, and commentator Paul Seesequasis, the exhibition centers the lives and resiliency of the Indigenous people represented, many of whom have been identified by Macfie and Seesequasis.

Part of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival

People of the Watershed: Photographs by John Macfie includes more than 100 photographs taken by John Macfie (1925–2018), a settler trapline manager who worked in Northern Ontario in the 1950s and 1960s. Macfie travelled with a camera, recording life in Anishinaabe, Cree, and Oji-Cree communities during a period of intense and rapid change. The people and places of Attawapiskat, Sandy Lake, Mattagami, and other communities across the Hudson’s Bay watershed are revealed through his lens in ways that emphasize the warmth and continuity of community life. Curated by nîpisîhkopâwiyiniw (Willow Cree) curator, writer, journalist, cultural advocate, and commentator Paul Seesequasis, the exhibition centers the lives and resiliency of the Indigenous people represented, many of whom have been identified by Macfie and Seesequasis.

Part of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival