Preview of Touring Exhibitions
 

Organized and Circulated by the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre

Natalka Husar: Burden of Innocence     

Burden of Innocence features the work of Toronto artist Natalka Husar. For this exhibition, Husar takes her lifelong obsession with painting and with Ukraine, her ancestral home, into new territory. She presents her work in three interwoven, though unresolved, narratives in the form of a history play in three acts.

Organized for circulation by the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, the exhibition is a curatorial collaboration between the MSAC, McMaster Museum of Art, and the Tom Thomson Art Gallery. Natalka Husar: Burden of Innocence will premiere at the McMaster Museum of Art from November 19, 2009 to January 17, 2010. The exhibition comes to Guelph in winter 2010, then tours through Southern Ontario before heading to venues in Western Canada.

In support of the exhibition, the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre is producing a major publication on the work of Natalka Husar edited by Judith Nasby and featuring essays by Katerina Atanassova, Gerta Moray, Dawn Owen, Carol Podedworny, Stuart Reid, and Meeka Walsh.

Husar has also published a limited edition artist book featuring full colour reproductions of her paintings and the writings of Janice Kulyk Keefer (author of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism and professor at the University of Guelph). Their collaboration began on a journey to Ukraine in 2005 to experience “what life was like in the country that, less than a year before, had undergone what became known as the Orange Revolution.” Despite their North American birth, both Husar and Kulyk Keefer felt a deep connection to the country and culture that shaped the lives of their parents and profoundly influenced their upbringing. Supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, their journey into the social, political, and cultural vortex of today’s Ukraine has resulted in this extraordinary artist book.

Qamanittuaq: Where the River Widens

Qamanittuaq: Where the River Widens is a comprehensive exhibition of drawings by Inuit artists from Baker Lake, Nunavut. This touring exhibition is organized for circulation by the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre and focuses on eighty drawings selected from the MSAC collection. Qamanittuaq began its tour in Baker Lake, Nunavut in August 1994 and has since travelled across Canada and in the United States. This remarkable tour continues with the exhibition opening at the Prairie Art Gallery in Grande Prairie, Alberta on October 19, 2009 continuing to January 17, 2010.

The compelling drawings in this exhibition illustrate the highly individual approaches of Inuit artists and the unusually rich heritage of shamanistic and traditional spirit imagery from which they draw their inspiration. The exhibition is the first major survey exhibition of Baker Lake drawings representing 35 years of drawing history in this community.

The exhibition title, Qamanittuaq: Where the River Widens, has a double meaning referring to the English translation of Qamanittuaq (the Inuit name for Baker Lake), and the connecting confluence of traditional and non-traditional influences that create the context in which the drawings were produced.

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated book published by the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre.This comprehensive publication contains essays on the history of the art programs in Baker Lake, the distinctive characteristics of Inuit drawings, the 1994 Baker Lake Art Symposium, a memoir by artist William Noah, interviews with the artists, and images of their works.