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 hour  Cancelled 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.

The post Museum News: Spring/Summer 2019 appeared first on McMaster Museum of Art.

For those who missed it, or would like to review it, we recorded the formal portion of his presentation. Watch it now:

Michael Allgoewer’s exhibition 1514  includes nine recent sculptural and mixed media works. It is on view at the McMaster Museum of Art until March 16, 2019.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Michael Allgoewer is a Hamilton-based artist. He was born in Montreal in 1954 and studied briefly at the Ontario College of Art in the mid 1980s. He has shown extensively in solo and group exhibitions, in both public and private galleries. His work ranges from installation, emphasizing a connection with history and myth, often incorporating re-contextualized found material; to paintings which are abstract and rigorous in concept and execution.

Michael Allgoewer is represented by b contemporary gallery in Hamilton, Ontario.

The post Video: Michael Allgoewer’s Talk appeared first on McMaster Museum of Art.

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, 49^th 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)

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