NGC Lecture Series

Àbadakone | Continuous Fire | Feu continuel: Relatedness, Continuity and Activation
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Wednesday, November 20, 2019
10:30 am – 12 pm
Auditorium. In English with simultaneous French interpretation

Curators Greg Hill, Christine Lalonde, and Rachelle Dickenson share the stage to discuss the second exhibition in the Gallery’s ongoing series on international contemporary Indigenous art. The talk will focus on the ways in which the artworks featured in Àbadakone | Continuous Fire | Feu continuel and produced by Indigenous artists from around the globe are united by three main concepts: relatedness, continuity, and activation.

Greg A. Hill is currently Audain Senior Curator of Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada, where he became the inaugural Audain Curator of Indigenous Art and head of the Department of Indigenous Art in 2007. He has curated numerous exhibitions for some of Canada’s most acclaimed artists, including the first solo exhibition for a First Nations artist at the Gallery, Norval Morrisseau (2006), as well as Robert Davidson (2007), Daphne Odjig (2009), Carl Beam (2010), Charles Edenshaw (2012) and Alex Janvier (2016). In 2013, he was co-curator for Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art.

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Christine Lalonde is Curator of Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada. She has worked with Inuit artists across the North and remains actively engaged with the arts community. Her exhibition projects have advanced an appreciation for Inuit artists across Canada as well as further afield. These include ItuKiagâtta! Inuit Sculpture from the Collection of the TD Bank Financial Group (2005), Inuit Sculpture Now (2007) and Sanaugavut: Inuit Art from the Canadian Arctic (2010). In 2013, she co-curated Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art. Formerly the editor of Inuit Art Quarterly, she continues as Chair of the Editorial Board.

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Rachelle Dickenson is co-curator of Indigenous Art for the exhibition Àbadakone | Continuous Fire | Feu continuel. With Lisa Myers, an artist, independent curator and educator, she also co-curated Reading the Talk 2012–2016. Engaged in relationships and distinctions between Canadian and Indigenous art histories, pedagogies and curatorial practices in Canadian exhibition and educational institutions form the core of her research, curatorial, and experience-based practice. She is a PhD candidate at the School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies at Carleton University and has an MA in Art History from McGill University.

Leonardo's Science and his Art
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Wednesday, December 11, 2019
10:30 am – 12 pm
Auditorium. In English with simultaneous French interpretation

How impressive was the genius of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) and how did being a scientist affect his work as an artist? Angelo B. Mingarelli explores the relationship between aspects of the scientific work of the universal genius and polymath, his art, and the reflexive influence of one upon the other.

The interests of Angelo B. Mingarelli have always included research in analysis and differential equations, mathematical education and a lifelong preoccupation with the interplay between mathematics and the arts, in particular with Leonardo da Vinci. His recent artistic work is connected to painting for future sentient AI beings. After teaching at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Ottawa, Dr. Mingarelli is currently Professor of Mathematics at Carleton University, where he has been honoured with Faculty of Science Awards for Excellence in Teaching (1992, 1996) and a Teaching Achievement Award (1998–1999).

Photo credit: Angelo Mingarelli

A Wink and a Nod: Alterity and Satire in the Visual Arts​ (In French)
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Wednesday, January 22, 2020
10:30 am – 12 pm
Auditorium. In French with simultaneous English interpretation

To what extent do the visual arts use satire when addressing representations of otherness? Through an examination of various historical and contemporary works, this talk explores how analogy, allegory, duality, humour, irony and an ethical point of view reflect, in a satirical way, the representation of alterity, or otherness, in the visual arts — whether in drawings, engravings, installations, public art, performances, and more.

The discussion begins with reference to a number of famous political cartoons by historical Canadian artists Henri Julien and Albéric Bourgeois. Issues of satire and alterity will also be explored in relation to public art projects featured in London as part of the Fourth Plinth series in Trafalgar Square — Alison Lapper Pregnant (Marc Quinn, 2005) and Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle (Yinka Shonibare MBE RA, 2010) — before looking at more recent works making a mark in today’s art world.

A Professor of Quebec and Canadian Art History and Historiography at the Université du Québec, Dominic Hardy leads the Équipe de recherche en histoire de l’art au Québec and the Laboratoire numérique des études en histoire de l’art du Québec. In 2009, with graduate students and colleagues, he established Caricature et satire graphique à Montréal (CASGRAM). A research environment dedicated to studying the evolution of caricature and graphic satire in Québec since colonial times, its activities have made possible a series of conferences, publications and collaboratively edited books.

Photo credit: Émilie Tournevache, UQAM

Ozias Leduc: Always and Forever (In French)
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Wednesday, February 19, 2020
10:30 am – 12 pm
Auditorium. In French with simultaneous English interpretation

Laurier Lacroix's interest in the painter Saint-Hilaire Ozias Leduc (1864–1955) dates back to the 1970s. Although the artist’s work covers a period of nearly 70 years and is not easy to navigate, recent research offers an opportunity to revisit the work of this symbolist painter who, from his first still lifes painted in trompe-l'oeil to his church decorations whose subjects combine work with prayer, developed a profound body of work worth careful reflection and investigation.

This presentation is a tribute to Jean-René Ostiguy (1925–2016), a Curator at the National Gallery of Canada who contributed so much to our knowledge of the artist.

Laurier Lacroix C.M. is Professor Emeritus at the Université du Québec à Montréal, where he teaches Art History and Museology. His research focus is mainly on public collections and the historiography of art history and art in Quebec and Canada before 1940. He is currently preparing a history of artists' studios in Quebec. Recipient of the Prix Carrière de la Société des musées québécois (1997) and the Prix Gérard-Morisset (2008), Dr. Lacroix is also a member of the Académie des lettres du Québec.

Photo credit: UQAM audio-visual service

Alejo Fernández and Creativity in the Spanish Renaissance Workshop
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Wednesday, March 25, 2020
10:30 am – 12 pm
Auditorium. In English with simultaneous French interpretation

Alejo Fernández is one of Renaissance Spain’s most inventive artists.  With a focus on two fragments of a lost altarpiece by Fernández, Christopher Etheridge and Stephen Gritt explore the artist’s creative process.  Through Infrared imaging they discover the influence of printmakers of his day and international models on the artist’s practice.

Christopher Etheridge studied History of Art at the University of Toronto and Harvard University, where he received his doctorate. He is responsible for the National Gallery of Canada’s collection of painting, sculpture and decorative art from the Renaissance through to the first part of the nineteenth century. By bringing together technical art history – the study of artists’ materials and practices – and traditional art history, he hopes to better understand the full significance of these complex objects.

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Previously at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Courtauld Institute of Art, Stephen Gritt is currently the Director of Conservation and Technical Research at the National Gallery of Canada. Specializing in technical art history and French eighteenth- and nineteenth-century painting and sculpture, he studied at University College, London, where he earned a BA in Art History with Philosophy and Aesthetics, and at the Courtauld Institute of Art, Department of Technology, The Conservation and Restoration of Easel Paintings.

 

Canada and Impressionism: New Horizons – From Cosmopolitanism to Confident Nationalism
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Wednesday, April 22, 2020
10:30 am – 12 pm
Auditorium. In English with simultaneous French interpretation

The international exhibition Canada and Impressionism: New Horizons positions the work of the Canadian Impressionists within the global context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its curator Katerina Atanassova casts off the time-held notion of the broad influence of French Impressionism by daring to uncover Canada’s contribution to the movement, a chapter hitherto missing from the history of World Impressionism.

Katerina Atanassova is Senior Curator of Canadian Art at the National Gallery of Canada where she has recently overseen the reinstallation of the Canadian art collection in the new Canadian and Indigenous Galleries. She has curated award-winning exhibitions of historical and contemporary Canadian art in Canada and abroad, including William Berczy – Man of Enlightenment (2004), F. H. Varley: Portraits Into the Light (2006), Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven (2011), James Wilson Morrice: The A. K. Prakash Collection in Trust to the Nation (2017) and Canada and Impressionism: New Horizons (2019).