Warm up with us for an art-inspired afternoon tea.
Come in from the cold and join the Ottawa Art Gallery for an afternoon of tea and art on Sunday, February 11 in the Alma Duncan Salon.
Together we will celebrate the opening of our new exhibition Vision and Views: Landscape and Abstraction in the Firestone Collection of Canadian Art and host our annual Firestone Chat with a conversation between Alexandra Badzak (OAG Director and CEO), Rebecca Basciano (OAG Chief Curator), and Germain Wiseman (Scientific Documentation Technologist, Canadian Conservation Institute). Exploring documentation and analysis of Mount Thule, Bylot Island (c. 1930) by Lawren Harris from the Firestone Collection of Canadian Art, this program will look beneath the layers to explore the use of photography in scientific research on historical artwork, followed by a Q&A.
Before the Art & Tea, be sure to check out our special edition Winterlude Creative Sundays celebrating the Lunar New Year, or drop in for a spot talk with OAG Assistant Curator Meghan Ho in Visions and Views to learn more about Takao Tanabe’s work On Greener Hillsides on level 2!
Schedule of Events:
10:00 AM — Winterlude Creative Sundays Workshop: Year of The Dragon (more details available here).
12:30 PM — Drop in for a spot talk with OAG Assistant Curator Meghan Ho to learn more about Takao Tanabe’s artistic practice and his work On Greener Hillsides in Visions and Views (Level 2).
1:00 PM — Doors to Alma Duncan Salon (Level 3) open. Afternoon Tea served.
1:10 PM — Opening Remarks and Looking Beneath the Layers: In Conversation with Alexandra Badzak, Rebecca Basciano and Germain Wiseman on the photographic analysis of historical artworks, followed by Q&A
REGISTER HERE
Meet the Speakers
Alexandra Badzak (B.F.A./ M. Ed) has been the Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Ottawa Art Gallery (OAG) for over ten years where she has led the charge on the OAG Expansion project, one of the most important cultural infrastructure projects in Ottawa for a generation which opened in 2018. Expanding the gallery significantly (physical space, staffing, programming, development and marketing), she also helped to profile the importance of Ottawa’s cultural scene by creating a new, progressive space for the arts and situating it on the vanguard of evolving contemporary conversations .
Alexandra is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Ottawa and the President of the Canadian Art Museum Directors Organization (CAMDO). She is also a member of the International Women’s Forum and the Association of Art Museum Directors.
Rebecca Basciano, MA, is the Chief Curator at the Ottawa Art Gallery, where she has been working for the last 10 years. She contextualizes Canadian artistic practices through exhibitions, publishing catalogues, acquiring works for the collection, facilitating touring exhibitions, and networking partnerships. She specializes in Canadian art, and has a demonstrated interest in promoting the work of women artists, while also advocating for consistent representation. She has curated many exhibitions from the Gallery’s Firestone Collection of Canadian Art, including group shows featuring artists such as Yvonne McKague Housser, Kathleen Daly, Anne Savage, Marcelle Ferron, and Ghitta Caiserman.
Germain Wiseman holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography (2012) from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He also received an advanced diploma in Graphic Design (2011) and a diploma in Photography (2007) from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario.
Germain joined the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) in 2016. He works as a scientific documentation technologist, providing advanced imaging services in support of CCI conservation and research projects. Prior to this, he worked as a digital imaging technician at Library and Archives Canada. His expertise in the cultural heritage imaging field spans over a decade.
Germain specializes in documentation and scientific imaging of cultural heritage. He develops and delivers imaging workshops and webinars for cultural heritage institutions across Canada, contributing to CCI’s mandate of knowledge dissemination.
Image: Lawren S. Harris, Mount Thule, Bylot Island, c. 1930, oil on canvas, 101.6cm x 92.1cm. Firestone Collection of Canadian Art, the Ottawa Art Gallery. Donated to the City of Ottawa by the Ontario Heritage Foundation
