Category: Public Programs
Museum News: Spring/Summer 2019
Museum of Art Closing for Environmental System Updates
The McMaster Museum of Art (MMA) will be temporarily closed from March 19 – August 23, 2019 for major updates to its environmental systems. The shutdown is necessary to ensure the highest standard of care and preservation for the more than 6,000 objects in the University’s significant art collection. The MMA is a Category “A” cultural institution as designated by the Government of Canada. more info
We apologize for any inconvenience and look forward to reopening in time for the Fall Semester with exciting new exhibitions. In the meantime, Museum staff will be taking programming ‘to the streets’ with a series of free education programs, including In-School Art Programs (Fully Booked), Mini-University activities, public art projects, campus art tours, and much more. Further details below.
We will be sharing updates and additional programming on this page and on social media channels throughout the closure.
MMA Public Programmes during Spring/Summer include…
GUIDED TOURS & LUNCHTIME ART ACTIVITIES
Presented by the N. Gillian Cooper Education Program
Free. No registration required.
In the event of rain, outdoor activities will be cancelled. Please follow our social media channels for updates.
- Walking Tours of Selected Campus Architecture
Thursday, May 9 at 12 noon | length: 1 hour
Meet in front of the McMaster Museum of Art for a guided tour of buildings in the central campus area from Hamilton Hall to Divinity College.
Thursday, May 23 at 12 noon | length: 1 hourCancelled due to inclement weather
Meet in front of JHE by the clock for a guided tour that will cover buildings in the south area of campus from the Reactor to the Health Sciences Centre.
Wednesday, June 19 at 12 noon | length: 1 hour
Meet in front of the McMaster Museum of Art for a guided tour of buildings in the central campus area. Hamilton Arts Week Event - Walking Tour of Selected Campus Sculpture
Tuesday, June 18 at 12 noon | length: 1 hour
Guided tour begins in front of the Museum of Art. Hamilton Arts Week Event - Outdoor Sketching
Thursday, June 20 at 12 noon | length: 1 hour
Art supplies provided in front of the Museum of Art. Hamilton Arts Week Event
PUBLIC ART COMMISSIONS
This summer, McMaster Museum of Art will be commissioning three separate public artworks for the exterior of the building.
Must See Exhibitions Off Campus…
McMaster’s Monet in AGO Blockbuster
McMaster’s Claude Monet painting of Waterloo Bridge has been borrowed by the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto for their spring exhibition Impressionism in the Age of Industry: Monet, Pissarro and more from February 16 to May 5, 2019. We are delighted that the work was selected and that we were able to accommodate the request. The painting has just returned from the nationally touring exhibition A Cultivating Journey: The Herman H. Levy Legacy, and following the Museum’s spring/summer closure, it will be hung once again and on permanent display at McMaster Museum of Art (MMA). More info
Counterpoint: SUMMA 2019
Annual McMaster University BFA Exhibition
Guest Curator: Hitoko Okada
LOCATION: The Cotton Factory
270 Sherman Ave N, Hamilton, ON L8L 6N4
April 6 – 19, 2019
Due to the Museum shutdown, the 2019 McMaster University BFA Graduation exhibition (aka SUMMA) will be hosted off campus at The Cotton Factory. Please join us at the Cotton Factory on Saturday, April 6, 11 am – 3 pm for the Opening Celebration and MMA sponsored student awards. Until then, follow the graduating class on Instagram @mcmastersumma2019 for a sneak preview of the artists’ work.
McMaster’s Monet included in AGO blockbuster
Winterfest Art Activities at Mac February 9
FULL! Museum Offers Free In-School Art Programs: Spring 2019
Talk by Artist Angela Grossmann and Curator Lynn Ruscheinsky
Winter Exhibitions Opening January 17
Angela Grossmann’s Troublemakers coming to McMaster
The Art of Seeing Program: Updates
Artist Talk by Ernest Daetwyler – Oct 18 at 12:30
Video: Bertrand Russell Panel Discussion
Jeremy Dutcher Concert at McMaster
Ursula Johnson: Mi’kwite’tmn (Do You Remember)
Bruce Barber: The Bertrand Russell Reading Room
McMaster Museum of Art presents:
Bruce Barber: The Bertrand Russell Reading Room
EXHIBITION AND EVENT
In conjunction with the Undying Hope for this Dangerous World exhibition, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Bertrand Russell archives at McMaster University, the Museum of Art invited Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University professor Bruce Barber to develop an artist project. Barber’s project launches at the Museum in September with a special event and an exhibition environment – complete with recreated version of Russell’s cell in Brixton Prison – highlighting the life, work, and continued relevance of the renowned British philosopher and mathematician.
EVENT | September 18 from 12:30 – 1:20 pm
Bruce Barber, Artist and Professor in conversation with McMaster University faculty:
Virginia Aksan, Professor Emeritus, Department of History
James Ingram, Professor, Department of Political Science
Neil McLaughlin, Professor, Department of Sociology
They will speak about key themes relating to the exhibition including, but not limited to:
- Pacifism and its continued relevance in today’s globalized world
- Feminist Approaches to Bertrand Russell’s philosophy
- Academics, Public intellectuals and Political Activism.
Free and Open to the Public.
Event will be held in the McMaster Museum of Art’s 4th Floor Tomlinson Gallery, in the Bruce Barber installation
Museum’s front desk are happy to provide elevator access.
Seating is limited and is available first-come-first-served
EXHIBITION | September 13 – December 21, 2018
In his concept proposal, Bruce Barber noted another Russell anniversary in 2018:
Russell spent six months in Brixton Prison in 1918 for prejudicing “His Majesty’s relationship with the U.S.A” and where he wrote his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. 2018 coincidentally marks the centenary of the end of the First World War that will be probably reduced to jingoistic celebrations of militarism that would have been abhorred by the philosopher who spent much of his life protesting war.
For the Museum, Barber has devised a reading room environment. The key gallery element is a constructed simulacrum of the Brixton prison cell, furnished with a bed, writing desk, stool and a quote from Russell, realized in neon: “War does not determine who is right – only who is left.” Other Russell quotes will be positioned on the perimeter walls of the gallery space, with two Barber-produced videos relating to Russell, his life and times, and images of the present to raise awareness of Russell’s life and work and continuing relevance in today’s world; the complex ethical issues that surround forms of oppression, terrorism and “war responses” affecting the lives of people globally.
ABOUT BRUCE BARBER
Bruce Barber was born in New Zealand and has worked internationally across performance, installation, film, video and photography since the early 1970s. His artwork has been exhibited internationally at the Paris Biennale, Sydney Biennale, 49th Parallel Gallery NYC, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC, Walter Phillips Gallery, London Regional Gallery, Auckland City Art Gallery, Artspace, Sydney, Auckland, London, Paris and Venice (2015, 2017), and is represented in various public and private collections. Barber is the editor of Essays on Performance and Cultural Politicization and of Conceptual Art: the NSCAD Connection 1967-1973. He is co-editor, with Serge Guilbaut & John O’Brian of Voices of Fire: Art Rage, Power and the State. Editor of Condé +Beveridge: Class Works (2008); also author of Performance [Performance] and Performers: Essays and Conversations (2 volumes) (2008); and Trans/Actions: Art, Film and Death (2008); Littoral Art & Communicative Action edited by Marc James Léger (2013). His critical essays have appeared internationally in numerous anthologies, art journals and magazines. Barber’s interdisciplinary art practice is also documented in the publications Reading Rooms (1990) and Bruce Barber Work 1970-2008 (2009).
www.brucebarber.ca
Curators Stephan Cleland and Blair French summarized Barber’s work as “developing propositional and situational works that engage and question social and political regimes of power.”
(From Bruce Barber Work 1970-2008, Artspace, Sydney and Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, Manukau)
Workplace Wellness Activities at the Museum
FAQ in the Midnight Sun Exhibition
Guided Tours of Campus Sculpture during Hamilton Arts Week
Public Lecture: Napoleon’s Maps and the Conduct of War
McMaster University Library presents:
PUBLIC LECTURE
L.R. Wilson Hall (Concert Hall), McMaster University
June 13, 2018 at 6:00 PM
Open to the public, RSVP to reserve a seat.
Napoleon’s Maps and the Conduct of War
Frederick C. Schneid, High Point University
One of Napoleon’s first appointments was as an officer in the Bureau Topographique, responsible for war planning and mapping theaters of war. The development of strategy necessitated proper intelligence gathering, and mapping was perhaps one of its most import tasks. Indeed, Napoleon later demanded up to date maps to determine the deployment and operations of his armies after he became ruler of France. The lecture will explore the relationship between Napoleon, maps and military campaigning in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Included will be a discussion of maps held in the Clifford Map Collection, one of which was presented to Napoleon in recognition of his victory in Italy in 1800.
Frederick C. Schneid is Herman and Louise Smith Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at High Point University in North Carolina. He received his PhD from Purdue University, where he studied under eminent military historian Gunther E. Rothenberg. Professor Schneid’s research specialty is French and Italian military history from the French Revolution to the Wars of Italian Unification. He is the author and editor of sixteen books, and numerous book chapters and articles. Among his publications are European Armies of the French Revolution, The French-Piedmontese Campaign of 1859, The Second War of Italian Unification, Napoleon’s Conquest of Europe: The War of the Third Coalition and Napoleon’s Italian Campaigns, 1805-1815. He is currently working on a manuscript on Napoleon’s first Italian campaign and writing two chapters for the forthcoming Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars.
Followed by:
Gentleman, Soldier, Scholar and Spy: The Napoleonic Era Maps of
the Honourable Robert Clifford (1767-1817)
Gord Beck, McMaster University
Robert Clifford was the third son of the 4th Lord Clifford of Chudleigh. While serving as an officer in Dillon’s Regiment under Louis XVI of France, he was trained in the most advanced methods of military science and cartography of the age. His knowledge of the inner workings of the French military, coupled with the maps of fortifications he smuggled out of France while narrowly avoiding the guillotine, proved to be of immeasurable value to his English countrymen. His advice was sought by General John Graves Simcoe for the defense of England against a French invasion, and on the formation of a new military college at Sandhurst. Learn the story behind the man, his maps, and how they came to McMaster.
Gord Beck is McMaster University Library’s Map Specialist, and the curator of the Robert Clifford Map Exhibit on view at the McMaster Museum of Art from May 26 through September 1, 2018. He developed his expertise in military cartography over his 20-year period working in the Lloyd Reeds Map Collection, receiving the President’s Award for Outstanding Service in 2014. Gord is a recognized expert in the field of WWI trench maps and aerial photos, and has appeared frequently in the media and as a guest speaker on that topic. He has recently completed two projects with Canadian Geographic involving the creation of a ‘Giant Floor Map of Vimy Ridge,’ and a documentary about mapping and aerial photography in WWI narrated by Dan Aykroyd and entitled, ‘Drawn to Victory.’
FLUX: Graduating Art Student Exhibition April 5-28, 2018
The Art of Seeing Offered through Continuing Ed
Artist & Curator’s Talk: Susan Schelle and Ana Barajas, March 7
You’re invited…
Artist & Curator’s Talk
by Susan Schelle, Artist, and Ana Barajas, Curator
McMaster Museum of Art
Wednesday, March 7, 12:30 – 1:20 pm
Presented as a complement to the exhibition Susan Schelle: Selected Works on view in the Museum’s entrance level Sherman Gallery until March 24, 2018
Admission is Free and all are welcome.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Susan Schelle was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and currently lives and works in Toronto. She was an Associate Professor Emeritus in Visual Studies, J.H. Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto. She has completed a number of public art commissions, notably salmon run at The Rogers Centre Toronto, passage at York University Toronto, and laws of nature at Court House Square Park, Toronto. She has shown both nationally and internationally including The Cenci Gallery, Rome, Italy and The Freedman Gallery Albright College, Reading, Pennsylvania. Her work resides in the collections of Air Canada, The Art Gallery of Ontario, The Art Gallery of Hamilton, McMaster Museum of Art, The Winnipeg Art Gallery, The Vancouver Art Gallery, and The National Gallery of Canada. In addition to her own work, Schelle has collaborated with Mark Gomes on several public commissions, most recently jetstream at Terminal One, Pearson International Airport, Toronto.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Born in Mexico City, Mexico, Ana Barajas holds a BFA from OCAD University in Sculpture/Installation. She received a MVA, Curatorial and a MA, Modern Art History from the University of Toronto. As the Director of YYZ Artists’ Outlet, a non-profit artist-run centre, Barajas has managed more than one-hundred exhibitions to date. Independent curatorial projects include It takes everyone to know no one in 2011 at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Art Museum, University of Toronto, The 19th Holeat Cuchifritos Gallery+Project Space, NY in 2014 and the group exhibition Disappearing Act at the Thames Art Gallery, Chatham-Kent in 2017.
McMaster Museum of Art
Alvin A. Lee Building
McMaster University
1280 Main St W
Hamilton, ON L8S 4L6
905.525.9140 x.23241
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