All posts tagged: exhibition

Winnie-the-Pooh: Exploring a Class exhibition at the ROM during COVID

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Before the lockdown, the first one, I was able to see the exhibition Winnie-the-Pooh: Exploring a Classic at the ROM created by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  If you grew up on Disney, as I did, my favourite character was Winnie-the-Pooh. I had almost everything you could have as it relates to the cute little bear. So, when I heard there was an entire exhibition dedicated to this wonderful character, I couldn’t resist seeing it, despite us being in a pandemic  Because my background is in design, I look at things much differently than your average visitor. I look at the overall design of the exhibition than the content. I know, it’s the content that the curators’ take pride in developing the overall story. But to me, it’s how the content is displayed that really brings those little pieces of content to life. The pros of visiting a world-class museum during a pandemic are that there isn’t really anyone around. I mean, crickets. So you get to experience the museum with a different …

Toronto Art Biennial: The Shoreline Dilemma

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As Ontario and many other provinces call for a state of emergency in an attempt to slow the COVID-19 pandemic, it is leaving its citizens cooped up in self-isolation subject to hours of binge-watching on Netflix. As an avid lover of the arts, and a board member to a local media arts centre, I too had made the decision to temporarily close our doors as many other institutions are forced to reduce social gathering and the spread of the virus. This has resulted in any museums offering virtual tours of their exhibitions in an attempt to continually engage with their members.  Several months ago before the pandemic hit our shores, Toronto hosted its first Art Biennial, 72 days of free art. Did you get a chance to catch one of over 20 programs scattered across the city of Toronto and Mississauga? Taking a very academic and political topic, “The Shoreline Dilemma”. On an autumn weekend, I bring my friends, who “like” art, to the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga located on the Lakeshore. I …

V&A Dundee by Kengo Kuma

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When I was thinking of traveling to Scotland, Edinburgh and Glasgow were at the top of my list. But when I heard of the opening of a new V&A museum in Dundee, designed by Kengo Kuma really solidified my decision to go there. It’s quite a distance from Edinburgh, a couple of hours at least. On your way to Dundee you can see rolling hills and the occasional herd of sheep passing you by. The most majestic part of the journey is traveling across the river and seeing this jagged little site at the edge of the water.

Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA)

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You gotta love a museum with a sense of humour. In the front of the entrance stands an equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington sculpted by Carlo Marochetti. The statue has a traffic cone on its head. The cone has come to represent the city’s light-hearted attitude to authority in most tourist books.

Highlights from CUTMR 2019

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The 16th installment of Come Up To My Room (#CUTMR) is an alternative design exhibition that provides a platform for experimentation outside the norms of art and design, at the edges between intention and interpretation. Freed from the constraints of traditional practice, CUTMR encourages spatial exploration that engages our senses, our memories and our perceptions of reality. The exhibition challenges participants to push their everyday practice by offering a blank canvas upon which to explore new themes and ways of working. Framed within the backdrop of the historic 130-year-old Gladstone Hotel, CUTMR invites artists and designers to create site-specific, immersive installations that stimulate the imagination and encourage discussion and dialogue between contributors and visitors alike. The Gladstone welcomes Jana Macalik & Jennie Suddick as the curatorial team for CUTMR 2019.

The Current State of Architecture

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In the recently published book On Seen, Zoe Ryan presents the eleven most influential design and architecture exhibitions in the last 50 years. From This is Tomorrow to Massive Change: The Future of Global Design she identifies the key drivers such as expressive antidotes, new materials and conceptual work that made these exhibitions so important. Coming from a curatorial background she builds the case and sets the stage that historically: Exhibitions have long played a vital role in making and remaking architecture and design history. They bring together key figures and bodies of work, position ideas and present arguments, shed light on current concerns, suggest future directions and draw connection with larger theoretical, political, and cultural conversation…Where within the fields of architecture and design, exhibitions have been critical to advancing ideas (13). Within this context of making and remaking design history through exhibitions, the most famous and prestigious stage for the fields of architecture and design is the Venice Architecture Biennale which is considered “the Olympics for architecture, bringing together a global perspective” (Feuerman, The Conversation) …

Sacred Spaces by Meredith Jay

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Meredith Jay is a multidisciplinary artist who received a BFA in studio art from Concordia University. Located in Toronto, she makes sculptural installations that merge the digital and physical, as well as, sound, drawing, video and film. Through ritual and devotion Jay invokes and questions human behaviour and the collective memory. 

Design Does – Barcelona Design Museum

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Now, this is how you get the average individual to care about design. Currently on show at Barcelona Design Museum Design Does collectively explores how design tackles the challenges faced by society, at times offering improvements and, at others, doing just the opposite. Conceived to transcend the limits of space, time and conventional formats, this project explores the responsibility that lies with design and its impact on the industry, people, social systems and cultural values. Design Does question the designer’s role today and in the future as a provider of solutions, humanist, strategist and/or agent of change.

V&A to salvage wreckage for Venice Architecture Biennale

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A fragment of the Robin Hood Gardens housing estate salvaged from the demolition site by London’s V&A museum is to be transported to Italy and displayed at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale. The V&A acquired a three-storey section of the estate last year in addition to the fragment it will take to Venice when demolition work on the brutalist social housing estate began.