Carleton University Art Gallery Fêted by Ontario Association of Art Galleries

CUAG has won two awards from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries (OAAG). A third project received special recognition.

“We’re extremely honoured to be recognized for three different projects,” says Diana Nemiroff, director of CUAG.  “The OAAG awards are highly competitive, peer-juried honours. We put considerable emphasis on our publications as they are the main way our research reaches a wider public. We emphasize both the beauty of the object and the quality of the writing, so we are pleased that these honours span both style and content.”

Sandra Dyck, curator at CUAG, won the Curatorial Writing Award (major essay over 5,000 words) for her essay Toys Are Us in the exhibition catalogue Michèle Provost: Selling Out. The exhibition, presented during the summer of 2008, took the form of a store displaying four product lines – 155 action-figure-style sculptures, 200 trading cards, 55 sliding block puzzles and 12 comic book covers – with characters drawn from the world of high art.

Designer Kelsey Blackwell received a design award for Reverse Engineered / Rétro-ingéniere, a catalogue of an exhibition of two interactive new-media works produced collaboratively by Alexandre Castonguay and Mathieu Bouchard. This catalogue accompanied the exhibition Reverse Engineered: Alexandre Castonguay and Mathieu Bouchard at CUAG (Nov. 17, 2008 to Feb. 8, 2009.)

Special recognition for an art publication was given to the Gallery’s book Sanattiaqsimajut: Inuit Art from the Carleton University Art Gallery. This book also won first prize for exhibition catalogue design in the 2009 American Association of Museum Publications Design Competition (within the category of institutions with budgets less than $750,000.) The book is a full-colour, richly-illustrated hardcover catalogue documenting the highlights of the CUAG’s extensive collection of Inuit art. Its history is described in the opening essay by general editor Sandra Dyck. Guest curator Ingo Hessel, author of the renowned Inuit Art: An Introduction, selected 125 works of Inuit art from the university’s collection, each of which is reproduced in the catalogue. Hessel has contributed an essay that discusses the works in terms of several important narrative threads that recur throughout Inuit art. The book features 37 short essays on topics that manifest a diverse range of approaches. The book accompanied the exhibition of the same name, which was held in 2009.

The OAAG Awards are the only annual juried awards to recognize excellence and significant achievement in the public art gallery sector across Ontario. This year, 27 OAAG member public art galleries in 20 cities across Ontario were nominated for 21 awards in 10 categories. OAAG is a registered charitable organization that serves and represents Ontario’s dynamic public art galleries as valued and essential centres of art and learning. Over 200 organizations and individuals are members.

The awards were presented on Friday evening at the 33rd Annual OAAG Awards ceremony in Toronto.