Art Gallery of Mississauga

Last updated
Art Gallery of Mississauga
AGM Razzle Dazzle.jpg
Art Gallery of Mississauga
Established1987 (1987)
Location300 City Centre Drive,
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Coordinates 43°35′20.07″N79°38′37.96″W / 43.5889083°N 79.6438778°W / 43.5889083; -79.6438778
TypePublic Art gallery
DirectorAnna Gulbinski
Website www.artgalleryofmississauga.com

The Art Gallery of Mississauga (AGM) is a public, not-for-profit art gallery in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. It is located at the Mississauga Civic Centre right on Celebration Square across from Square One Mall. The Gallery is open six days per week (closed Mondays) and offers free admission and guided exhibition tours in addition to regular art social events, workshops for adult learners, and youth programmes for schools, universities and community groups.

Contents

The Gallery holds approximately 18 exhibitions a year on a rotating basis.

History

In 2013, the AGM hired artist Camille Turner to be Mississauga's first ever Artist in Residence. [1] Turner was interested in the hidden histories of Mississauga. Her projects for the AGM included the (un)settler Community Journal Project [2] and the 5&Dime walking tour, exploring strip malls as cultural spaces.

In 2014, the AGM launched an extensive re-branding campaign, characterized by a new design created by The White Room in Toronto. This campaign has received international recognition in design magazines, [3] and a finalist in the Graphis 2015 annual design competition. [4]

Permanent Collection

The AGM's Permanent Collection numbers over 500 works by regional and national artists. In 2013, the AGM launched a digital archiving project, funded by the Museums Assistance Program and the Museums and Technology Fund, which created an accessible online database launched on the AGM website in 2014. [5]

Because of space limitations, the Gallery had a moratorium on collecting since 2008. In 2014, the AGM presented a new collections policy, focusing on digital and lens-based works, with a particular focus on regional artists, iconic Canadian works and works by artists representing the social fabric of Mississauga. [6] The AGM's Permanent Collection was made accessible on an online archive in December 2014. [7]

Expansion

Long considered "the best kept secret in Mississauga" due to the lack of visibility of its location inside the Civic Centre, [8] in 2011 the AGM commissioned Lord Cultural Resources to conduct a facility expansion plan, with the objective of potentially moving the gallery into a new building to increase visibility and exhibition space. [9] The Lord Cultural study reported that, despite being in the sixth largest city in Canada, the AGM was the smallest public art gallery. [10] In June 2014, past AGM Director | Curator Stuart Keeler and Board President Mike Douglas appeared before Mississauga City Council to request support for a facility expansion. Gallery visitors grew from just under 19,000 in 2011 to over 30,000 in 2013. Options presented include an expansion of the AGM's current facility in City Hall and a new home in the Living Arts Centre across the street. City Council was supportive of the request, and asked staff to examine feasibility. [10]

Roots and Branches | Education

The AGM acquired a grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation to fund educational and engagement programming from 2013 – 2014. Roots and Branches is a comprehensive, hands-on approach to learning that facilitates free visits by Artists in Residence, who collaborate with Teachers to deliver lesson plans and visual art-inspired activities that extend standardized curriculum, while exposing students to critical processes in contemporary artistic practice. [11]

The program as well provides free Tours of the Gallery with free Bus Transit to and from the school site and the Art Gallery of Mississauga. [12]

Beyond the Art Trail | Artist Professional Practices Programme (APP)

Cindy Blazevic: PillBilly Fantasia, 2012. XIT-RM, AGM CindyBlazevicAGM.jpg
Cindy Blazevic: PillBilly Fantasia, 2012. XIT-RM, AGM

Living Waters

Living Waters is an interdisciplinary arts and environment project in collaboration with Corsair Public School and artist Christopher McLeod. [13] Teaching artist Christopher McLeod will facilitate student projects that look at the centrality of water to all environmental and sustainability issues. Students will learn about the importance of water to the travel, trade and survival of Indigenous peoples of this region; the Anishinaabe, the Wendat and the Haudenosaunee. Projects and field trips will emphasize the location of communities in relation to water to maintain food cultivation and survival.

XIT-RM

In 2012, the AGM opened the XIT-RM Project Space, an exhibition space sponsored by the RBC Foundation that is dedicated to emerging regional artists. Notable exhibitions include: Contemporary Jamaican Art circa1962 | circa2012, Lise Beaudry: Sur la glace | Standing on Ice (Winner, BMW Exhibition Prize 2012), [14] Genius Loci, 011+91 | 011+92, F'd Up!, The Sahmat Collective: Art and Activism in India Since 1989 (from The Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago), [15] Fausta Facciponte: Six Characters in Search of a Photograph, [16] and Joy and Sorrow: Photographs and Films by Elisa Julia Gilmour and Ben Freedman [17]

Six artists are selected annually by the gallery's curatorial team to exhibit work that honours the mission and mandate of the AGM, with an emphasis on contemporary art and critical engagement. Each exhibition features its own opening and is accompanied by a published catalogue with a curatorial essay. [18]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freer Gallery of Art</span> Art museum in Washington, D.C.

The Freer Gallery of Art is an art museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. focusing on Asian art. The Freer and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery together form the National Museum of Asian Art in the United States. The Freer and Sackler galleries house the largest Asian art research library in the country and contain art from East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Islamic world, the ancient Near East, and ancient Egypt, as well as a significant collection of American art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Santa Barbara Museum of Art</span> Art museum in CA, United States

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) is an art museum located in downtown Santa Barbara, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Burtynsky</span> Canadian photographer and artist

Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian photographer and artist known for his large format photographs of industrial landscapes. His works depict locations from around the world that represent the increasing development of industrialization and its impacts on nature and the human existence. It is most often connected to the philosophical concept of the sublime, a trait established by the grand scale of the work he creates, though they are equally disturbing in the way they reveal the context of rapid industrialization.

Arnaud Maggs was a Canadian artist and photographer. Born in Montreal, Maggs is best known for stark portraits arranged in grid-like arrangements, which illustrate his interest in systems of identification and classification.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suzy Lake</span>

Suzy Lake is an American-Canadian artist based in Toronto, Canada, who is known for her work as a photographer, performance artist and video producer. Using a range of media, Lake explores topics including identity, beauty, gender and aging. She is regarded as a pioneering feminist artist and a staunch political activist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abul Kalam Azad (photographer)</span>

Abul Kalam Azad is a noted contemporary Indian photographer. Abul's photographic works are predominantly autobiographical and expose the areas of politics, culture, contemporary history, gender and eroticism. His works attempts a re-reading of contemporary Indian history – the history in which ordinary people are absent and mainly provided by beautiful images and icons. Abul's works makes an active intervention in the common illustrative discourse of this history. Using the same tool, photography, that chisels history out of a block of ‘real’ human experiences, Abul makes a parody of it. 'Overall, the corpus of Azad's work can be seen to have a thrust towards an archive of local micro-history at the level of personal memory and in that sense, his works add up to a kind of social anthropology of his land and its people, though not necessarily in the line of tradition of the objective documentary'. Abul Kalam Azad is the visionary behind EtP Ekalokam Trust for Photography, a Trust dedicated to preserving and promoting contemporary Photography. He is also the Director of Project 365, a public photo art project that collectively creates and preserves photographic visuals of the fast changing culture and lifestyle of ancient Tamilakam. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Photo Mail online magazine.

Sanaz Mazinani is an Iranian–born Canadian multidisciplinary visual artist, curator and educator, known for her photography and installation art. She is currently based in San Francisco and Toronto.

Brighton Photo Biennial (BPB), now known as Photoworks Festival, is a month-long festival of photography in Brighton, England, produced by Photoworks. The festival began in 2003 and is often held in October. It plays host to curated exhibitions across the city of Brighton and Hove in gallery and public spaces. Previous editions have been curated by Jeremy Millar (2003), Gilane Tawadros (2006), Julian Stallabrass (2008), Martin Parr (2010) and Photoworks (2012). Brighton Photo Biennial announced its merger with Photoworks in 2006 and in 2020 its name was changed to Photoworks Festival.

Ram Rahman is a noted contemporary Indian photographer and curator. based in Delhi. He is one of the founding members of the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) in New Delhi, a leader in the resistance to communal and sectarian forces in India through its public cultural action.

Joanna Margaret Paul was a New Zealand visual artist, poet and film-maker.

Deanna Bowen is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice includes films, video installations, performances, drawing, sculpture and photography. Her work addresses issues of trauma and memory through an investigation of personal and official histories related to American slavery, migration, the Civil Rights Movement and the Ku Klux Klan. Bowen is a dual citizen of the US and Canada. She lives and works in Montreal.

Rehab Nazzal is a Palestinian-born multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Erika DeFreitas is a Toronto-based artist who works in textiles, performance and photography.

Sandra Brewster is a Canadian visual artist based in Toronto. Her work is multidisciplinary in nature, and deals with notions of identity, representation and memory; centering Black presence in Canada.

Meryl McMaster is a Canadian and Plains Cree photographer whose best-known work explores her Indigenous heritage. Based in Ottawa, McMaster frequently practices self-portraiture and portraiture to explore themes of First Nations peoples and cultural identity, and incorporates elements of performance and installation to preserve her mixed heritage and sites of cultural history in the Canadian landscape.

Mark Ruwedel is an American landscape photographer and educator.

Michelle Jacques is a Canadian curator and educator known for her expertise combining historical and contemporary art, and for her championing of regional artists. Originally from Ontario, born in Toronto to parents of Caribbean origin, who immigrated to Canada in the 1960s, she is now based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Ron Benner is an internationally recognized Canadian artist whose longstanding practice investigates the history and political economics of food cultures. He is also a gardener and writer who currently lives and works in London, Ontario.

Sophie Hackett is the Curator of Photography at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

Chun Hua Catherine Dong (she/they) is a Chinese-born Canadian multimedia artist. Dong’s artistic practice is based in performance art, photography, video, installation, virtuality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and 3D printing within the contemporary context of global feminism.

References

  1. ↑ "Social Work". Mississauga Life. Archived from the original on 2014-08-20. Retrieved 2014-08-19.
  2. ↑ Paterson, David (2014-07-06). "Dear diary: Journal project peers into the mindset of a city" . Retrieved 2014-08-19.
  3. ↑ "Razzle, Dazzle 'Em". Applied Arts. Retrieved 2014-08-19.
  4. ↑ "Art Gallery of Mississauga Identity". Graphis. Retrieved 2014-08-19.
  5. ↑ "Allegory of the Cave, Opening Reception". Akimbo. Archived from the original on 2014-10-06. Retrieved 2014-08-19.
  6. ↑ "Art Gallery of Mississauga needs your help". The Mississauga News. Retrieved 2014-08-19.
  7. ↑ "Art Gallery of Mississauga: Permanent Collection" . Retrieved 2015-01-02.
  8. ↑ "Art Gallery of Mississauga facing identity crisis". Brampton Guardian.
  9. ↑ "Facility Planning Study for the Art Gallery of Mississauga". Akimbo. Retrieved 2014-08-19.
  10. 1 2 Clay, Chris. "Gallery Just Too Small, AGM Officials Say". The Mississauga News. Retrieved 2014-08-19.
  11. ↑ Fisseha, Rebecca (2014-03-19). "Community profile: Art Gallery of Mississauga". Diaspora Dialogues. Archived from the original on 2014-08-21. Retrieved 2014-08-20.
  12. ↑ "Roots and Branches". Archived from the original on 2014-08-02. Retrieved 2014-08-19.
  13. ↑ "Christopher McLeod: Performance Sculpture Artist: Finding Water". www.christophermcleod.ca. Retrieved 2016-09-01.
  14. ↑ "Scotiabank CONTACT Photography FestivalSur la glace/Walking on Ice". Archived from the original on 2014-08-20. Retrieved 2014-08-19.. Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.
  15. ↑ Schechter, Fran. "Sahmat Inspires" . Retrieved 2014-08-19.
  16. ↑ "Scotiabank CONTACT Photography FestivalSix Characters in Search of a Photograph". Archived from the original on 2014-08-20. Retrieved 2014-08-19.. Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.
  17. ↑ "Scotiabank CONTACT Photography FestivalJoy and Sorrow: Photographs and Films by Elisa Julia Gilmour and Ben Freedman". Archived from the original on 2014-08-20. Retrieved 2014-08-19.. Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.
  18. ↑ "AGM Exhibit: XIT-RM". 2 August 2013. Retrieved 2014-08-19.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.