Current Exhibitions 
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GALLERY LEVEL ONE
Ticketed Admission applies to Level One exhibitions.
AGH Members receive Free Admission to all exhibitions.
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New Dawn: Italian Renaissance Art from Canadian Collections
On view May 16 to September 27, 2009
Curated by Dr. Patrick Shaw Cable
Standing as the anchor Summer historical exhibition within the Gallery’s yearlong celebration of Italian art and culture, New Dawn: Italian Renaissance Art from Canadian Collections provides AGH visitors with the unique opportunity to enjoy major Italian Renaissance works housed in leading Canadian collections, including the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Featuring a range of representative works emanating from the grand Italian tradition, New Dawn focuses principally on art from the early Renaissance through Mannerism, yet includes some later works demonstrating the evolution of the grand tradition. The exhibition embraces diverse subjects, manners, and media, including painting, sculpture, drawings and prints, as well as Italian ceramic maiolica generously loaned from the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. A first for the city of Hamilton, New Dawn showcases beautiful works from sister Canadian institutions that originate from a central historical period, when Western art was completely transformed and Italy played the leading role in this overwhelming cultural transformation. Among the varied treasures on view will be the fine oil portrait of an unknown man by Tintoretto, the most prolific Venetian painter of the late 16th century (National Gallery); a masterful and lively red chalk drawing of Venus and Cupid by Giulio Cesare Procaccini (Bologna, 1574–Milan, 1625) (AGO); and religious works such as the oil on panel Adoration of the Shepherds attributed to Florentine painter Tommaso di Stefano (1495–1564) (AGO).
| Exhibition Partners: |
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Charles Criminisi, Partner - Agro Zaffiro LLP |
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Great Masters Series:
Psyche with a Butterfly
On view May 16 to September 27, 2009
Curated by Dr. Patrick Shaw Cable
Complementing New Dawn, this instalment of the Great Masters Series spotlights the late nineteenth-century Italian sculptor Cesare Lapini's Psyche with a Butterfly, an exquisite white crystalline marble statue being loaned by the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.
A Florentine born in 1848 and exhibiting in Rome in the last years of the nineteenth century, Lapini celebrated feminine beauty in sculptures of mythological figures such as Cupid's famous lover Psyche as well as contemporary flirtatious women of fashion. Combining the movement and brilliance of the work of Lapini's older compatriot, the Baroque master Gianlorenzo Bernini, with a modern sensuality, Lapini's Psyche possesses a robust body that appears poised to ascend skyward from the earth.
| Exhibition Partner: |
Dr. Michael and
Mary Romeo
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On the Edge of Your Seat: Italian Chairs from the Collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
On view May 16 to September 27, 2009
This exhibition is a collaboration between the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Co-curated by Diane Charbonneau, Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and Sara Knelman, Curator of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Hamilton
In the wake of Il Modo Italiano, the MMFA’s successful touring exhibition of Italian design from the 20th century, this new collaborative effort will focus on a selection of the Museum’s exceptional examples of post-1960s Italian-designed chairs. On the Edge of Your Seat will explore the development of materials and materiality in Italian chairs from the 1960s to the present, through the opposing tangible and tactile qualities Soft and Hard, Light and Heavy. The exhibition will bring together work by renowned Italian-born designers such as Jonathan de Pas, Alessandro Mendini and Gaetano Pesce with pieces by international artists such as Louise Campbell (Denmark), Roberto Matta (Chile) and Masanori Umeda (Japan), who have each created pieces exclusively for Italian design companies.
The chair is the ultimate expression of the fusion between function and form, imbued with the power to hold the human body and captivate the human imagination. The works brought together for this special event are often inspired by contemporary life, infusing everyday objects with exuberant personality and a spirit of the era of their creation.
| Exhibition Partners: |
The Hutton Family
Mark A. Rizzo, CIBC Wood Gundy
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TURN ON: Contemporary Italian Art
On view June 4 to September 13, 2009
Curated by Sara Knelman
TURN ON invites three of Italy’s most dynamic contemporary artists to engage viewers in Hamilton. The AGH will showcase Massimo Grimaldi’s evocative texts, Adrian Paci’s poetic films and Patrick Tuttofuoco’s vibrant sculptures. Their works are connected by a desire to activate urban environments. With suggestive language, electric currents and vivid colour, they harness the power of their subjects as a way of turning on their viewers.
All three artists were born during the period of Arte Povera, the influential Italian art movement that favoured readily available materials and shifted emphasis from form to idea. Too young to be conscious of the movement as it was happening, their works instead reflect both a progression of, and a freedom from, what is arguably the most significant reign of Italian art since the Renaissance. Although they live and work in Italy, their art practices are informed by a consciously global outlook.
This will be the first exhibition in Canada of all of the work on view, and the first show ever for Grimaldi and Tuttofuoco. The exhibition will be accompanied by a full colour catalogue.
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Below are installation shots of one of Massimo’s text pieces on James Street North at Cannon, presented in collaboration with the Hamilton Artists Inc.
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William Blair Bruce Memorial Donation
On permanent display
A salon-style hanging of the entire Bruce Memorial Donation of 1914 signals the beginning of the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Upon the premature death in 1906 of Hamilton-born William Blair Bruce, his widow, sculptor Caroline Benedicks-Bruce, his father William and his sister Bell Bruce-Walkden bequeathed twenty-nine of his paintings to the city, with the proviso that a properly equipped art gallery be established to house and present the collection. When the Gallery opened its doors for the first time in June of 1914, the Bruce Memorial Collection was the permanent collection. Presented here in its entirety, the Bruce Collection continues to be an appropriate touchstone. As an important nineteenth-century Hamiltonian who trained and worked abroad and exhibited both nationally and internationally, Bruce’s skill and activities reflect the scope and nature of Hamilton’s permanent collection: regional, national and international in scope, tracing the efforts and activities of artists who have exerted an impact on the visual arts past and present.
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GALLERY LEVEL TWO
Free admission courtesy of Orlick Industries.
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Il bellissimo panorama: Views of Italy
On view December 13, 2008 to October 12, 2009
Curated by Dr. Patrick Shaw Cable
Through many centuries the towns and countryside of Italy have been singularly cherished as a subject within Western art. For instance, in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, a fundamental component of artistic training was the voyage to Italy, where young artists steeped themselves in studying, copying, and imbibing the spirit of ancient Roman and Renaissance architecture, monuments, sculptures, and other art forms. By the nineteenth century, many international students completing the required Italian pilgrimage found just as much inspiration in the idyllic charm and natural beauty of living towns and landscape, as well as the colourful life and dress of folkloric types like peasants of the Roman Campagna or Neapolitan fishers.
Ushering in the Gallery’s 2009 Vista Italia celebration of Italian art and culture, the inaugural exhibition of Il bellissimo panorama features a fresh and poetic assortment of approximately forty Italian views from the AGH holdings — created by diverse European, Canadian, and American artists, and ranging in time from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Subjects include scenic sketches of named and unnamed Italian hill and mountain towns; prints representing Assisi and Siena; a large watercolour of an antique terrace on the hills outside Florence; and a dramatic oil by the French artist Jean Charles Joseph Rémond of Neptune’s Grotto in Tivoli. The exhibition also offers several views of figures outdoors, ranging from ancient Roman gods and goddesses to Italian peasants. Not surprisingly, one of the most recurring themes is Venice, christened La Serenissima (It.: “most serene”). Among the Canadian works depicting this queen of cities are two lively graphite sketches by A. Y. Jackson, three evocative oil paintings by James Morrice, and three crisp black-and-white photographs of Venetian canals by contemporary artist Jeff Nolte.
| Exhibition Partner: |
The Frisina Family, in memory of
Alfonso E. Frisina |
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Scultori Italiani
On view February 7, 2009 to February 14, 2010
Curated by Dr. Patrick Shaw Cable
This selection of a dozen bronze sculptures installed in the David Braley and Nancy Gordon Sculpture Atrium highlights the expressive artistry and technical skill of six nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian sculptors represented in the Gallery’s European collection. Most of the works come from the AGH Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Collection: several pieces each by Augusto Rivalta, Paolo Troubetzkoy, and Alfredo Pino, as well as one delightful head of a Street Urchin by Medardo Rosso, often called the only “Impressionist sculptor” in the history of art, and whose dynamic works particularly influenced his younger compatriots the Italian Futurists in the early decades of the twentieth century. Scultore Italiani also features two bronzes from the mid-twentieth century that have been part of the Gallery’s European holdings for many years — Pietro Consagra’s abstract Coro Impetuoso, and Giacomo Manzù’s beautiful Bust of Inge, which melds a lyrically classical mood with expressively primitive modeling.
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Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Vedute E Capricci
On view March 28 to December 13, 2009
Curated by Dr. Patrick Shaw Cable
The most acclaimed printmaker of eighteenth-century Italy, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) was also an architect, designer, theorist, and archaeologist. He is best known, however, for his etched vedute (It.: “views”) and capricci (It.: “caprices” or “fantasies”). While the former reveal the artist’s profound knowledge of ancient Roman architecture and technology, the latter — particularly the views of cavernous, multi-level carceri, or prisons, he began in 1749 — express his remarkably fantastical creativity. The psychologically disturbing worlds of Piranesi’s powerful prison capricci had their deepest and longest-lasting influence on writers, inspiring such minds as the French Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Stephane Mallarmé, and Marcel Proust; the American Edgar Allen Poe; and the twentieth-century English author and mystic Aldous Huxley. Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Vedute e Capricci features approximately fifteen of the artist’s large etchings of Italian vedute and capricci, ranging from topographical views of piazzas, gardens, and antique ruins and monuments — such as the Castel Sant’Angelo and the domed interior of Santa Costanza — to a pair of the impressive carceri that so inspired fertile imaginations for more than two centuries following.
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The Shock of Seven: The Group and Their Contemporaries
On view April 10, 2009 to March 14, 2010
Curated by Tobi Bruce
Experienced today, it’s difficult to imagine just how shocking the Group of Seven was to an audience largely accustomed to seeing representational landscapes, portraits and still lifes in the 1910s and 1920s. The Shock of Seven seeks to take the viewer back in time and provide the opportunity of seeing works by Group members within the context of their more conventional painting colleagues. Vibrant and modern works by members of the Group are set against the more traditional fare of such artists as Fred Haines, G. Horne Russell, G. Wyly Grier, and Hamilton’s Arthur Heming. It’s only in seeing the works of the Group of Seven hung alongside art being produced at the same time that we immediately understand just how avant-garde the Group really was.
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Canadian Classics: Celebrated Works from the Collection
On view April 3, 2009 to March 14, 2010
Curated by Tobi Bruce
The paintings and sculptures included in this semi-permanent installation are among the most prized of the Canadian collection. They are, in part, the works through which this collection is recognized and distinguished. Many are icons of Canadian art, paintings that have come to occupy a central and pivotal place in the story of Canadian art. Why? Because on the one hand, they are images that are familiar to us, and that we have seen again and again, in catalogues and textbooks, on cards and posters, and most importantly in exhibitions. On the other hand, it is the quality of these works that distinguishes them; these paintings and sculptures have come to represent the very best of an artist’s body of work, or a significant moment in their artistic development. Often, as with William Blair Bruce’s Phantom Hunter, the work is synonymous with the artist him or herself — the first image that comes to mind upon hearing the maker’s name.
This select gathering represents many of the highlights of our landscape and portrait collection, but it is only a small sampling of the greater depth and breadth that is the AGH collection of Canadian art.
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Kim Adams' Bruegel-Bosch Bus
On permanent display
Repeatedly in his work, Canadian artist Kim Adams has explored the patterns of a mobile society, creating works of art that are eccentric hybrids of the readymade. Blending humour, satire and seriousness, he builds “worlds” as a means of social critique. Adams’ installations exist comfortably in the space that divides life and art. His works have been presented in two very different social worlds: in a densely social environment such as a park or street and in a museum setting like the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Neither setting is privileged.
A magnificent visual masterpiece, Bruegel-Bosch Bus consists of a 1960 Volkswagon that appears to pull a post-industrial universe displaying a cornucopia of fantastic and seductive worlds that play with our senses. It was produced over a 7-year span. This futuristic diorama is a permanent fixture in the AGH Sculpture Atrium overlooking the Irving Zucker Sculpture Garden, past Hamilton City Hall and the Niagara Escarpment. Reminiscent of a previous installation by Adams titled Earth Wagons that presented a micro-model North American society fixed on leisure and entertainment, the Breugel-Bosch Bus encapsulates the next whole world picture, a world in which reality and unreality, logic and fantasy, banality and sublimation of existence, form an inexplicable unity. This ‘bus’ is a Kubrickesque megalopolis made of icons symptomatic in present society and draws upon urban fantasies, phantasmagoric, post-apocalyptic landscapes, and a plethora of different times and cultures. Buildings from different epochs are aligned side by side and space becomes an imaginary territory where chaos prevails.
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The Jean and Ross Fischer Gallery
Free admission courtesy of Orlick Industries.
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The Latvian Song Festival Art Exhibition
On view June 27 to September 7, 2009
The Latvian Song Festival has been celebrated in Canada for over fifty years, continuing Latvian traditions in song and the arts. The festival exhibition of fine art is an intrinsic component of this cultural event. This juried exhibition of contemporary Canadian-Latvian artists’ work may be viewed as the echo and spirit of their past cultural heritage in modern-day Canada. Latvian-Canadians who settled in southwestern Ontario and other parts of Canada have generated an artistic community grateful for Canadian freedom and the many opportunities to contribute in our open society. This exhibition highlights the diversity and creativity of our artists.
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*Please note that as a multipurpose space, the Jean and Ross Fischer Gallery is an area where photography is allowed by patrons and members of the public in accordance with the AGH Photography Policy. Click here for the Jean and Ross Fischer Gallery Information Package.
Also, the Jean and Ross Fischer Gallery is a space that can be rented for private or corporate functions and therefore may be unavailable for viewing by the public. We apologize for any inconvenience. If you are interested in viewing this space specifically, please call ahead to ensure the exhibition installed is available at 905-527-6610.
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