OPEN THE DOORS GUELPH!
Saturday, September 25
12pm Bear BBQ Bonanza
Join MSAC’s most charismatic sculpture, “The Bear”, for an outdoor BBQ. Bring clothes for him to wear too - he likes to be fashionable.
Free admission | Cash BBQ
Music provided throughout the afternoon by the Guelph Jazz Festival.
2pm Get Linked in to the World’s Longest Human Art Chain
Come join hands. Promote tolerance, artistic vision, acceptance, connectedness, and understanding.
We want to wrap the Art Centre in the fabric of this community - to create the world's longest human art chain at a public art gallery. We invite people of all ages to join the chain which will weave through the gallery and into the Sculpture Park.
(Sculpture Park / 1st – 2nd floor galleries)
Free Admission
4pm Wine and Film: Dark Pines: a documentary investigation into the death of Tom Thomson
Free Admission ($5/drink)
Enjoy a glass of Ontario wine and watch the controversial film on the mysterious death of Tom Thomson. Plus, enjoy a special viewing of Tom Thomson’s painting The Drive, the last major work he completed before his death.
[Directed by David Vaisbord, Produced by Ric Beairsto |Laughing Mountain Communications
48 minutes • 2005]
On a rainy summer day in 1917, beloved Canadian painter Tom Thomson paddled alone onto Canoe Lake in Ontario's Algonquin Park and was never again seen alive. He was just 39 and had painted only 50 major works. In the decades following, this small but extraordinary body of work became the single most influential in Canadian landscape painting, and Thomson grew into a figure of mythical proportions. For 50 years, new evidence and testimony continued to surface in his mysterious death. Most people familiar with the story think Thomson drowned accidentally, but this richly crafted docudrama reconsiders events surrounding his untimely end. The details—a summer love affair that may have spawned bitter rivalry and unwanted consequences, a rumoured political debate that took a violent turn, secret gambling debts, a haphazard investigation, even an exhumed body from Thomson's casket that proved to be the remains of another man—come vividly to life with performances from some of Canada's best actors. In the end, the only certainty is that Thomson's strange death has added to the enduring appeal of this Canadian icon, whose powerful paintings inspired the Group of Seven.
8pm Get Down with DJ Guelph
Enjoy music, wine, outdoor patio, preview MSAC’s fall exhibitions.
Free Admission | Cash Bar
10pm Late Night Lantern Tour
Ghost stories, legends, and magic woods. Join us for a lantern-lit walk through MSAC’s nationally renowned Sculpture Park and grounds.
Free Admission
Sunday, September 26 at 2pm
2pm Wine and Film: Ken Danby
+ A special visit by his wife Gillian Danby
Free Admission ($5/drink)
[Michael Glassbourg |TickleScratch Productions | 24 minutes • 2007]
Ken Danby’s paintings are recognized all over the world. From the painting of hands reaching down to lace up a skate, to the portrait of Wayne Gretzsky on the occasion of his retirement, to a woman on horseback in the surf or the profoundly insightful portrait of Gordon Lightfoot, Danby’s work has left a lasting impression. A visit to his studio outside Guelph, Ontario provides an opportunity for Danby to explain in great detail the process of his work. Filmed just a month before he died prematurely of a heart attack, this documentary celebrates the work of an enigmatic man who is as impressive as his paintings.