CMA Outstanding Achievement

Research

For research activities carried out in museums or applied to museum practice that contributes to the development of new knowledge and understanding.

McMichael Canadian Art Collection — Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment

Bridget Anne Sack. Quillwork boxes, 1933 or 1939, birchbark, porcupine quill, wood, spruce root. Nova Scotia Museum, Halifax. Photo — Craig Boyko

Developed in conjunction with an immensely thorough publication, Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment brings the significantly underrepresented female perspective to the McMichael gallery, one of the hallmark institutions of Canadian art.

With agency and devotion, the collection of artworks takes on the challenge of filling in the glaring gaps that exclude female artists from earning the recognition they deserve in the formation of a national artistic identity. The result is an exhibition that highlights the unique thematic underpinnings of the female perspective and the efforts these women made in advancing our understanding of Canada.

Uninvited endeavored to equally recognize the individuals who were overlooked in the history of Canadian art.

McMichael Canadian Art Collection — Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment also received an honourable mention in the Award of Outstanding Achievement — Exhibition category.

“Uninvited offers a counter-narrative to the traditional male-centric account of Canadian art history, bringing together a group of women artists from a century ago who were attending to everything their Group of Seven landscape-painting counterparts were not: cities, social inequity, portraits, resource extraction, and Indigenous culture and displacement. The publication extends the content of the exhibition in important ways, bringing together a wide range of curators, artists, writers and cultural knowledge keepers to share their research and insights on this historically overlooked material.

“All of us at the McMichael are truly delighted by this recognition of our efforts. It was a heavy lift indeed, but the work of many hands. We commend all the brilliant writers, art historians, artists, critics and knowledge keepers who joined us on this inspiring journey.”

— Sarah Milroy, Chief Curator

Ève Lamoureux — Cultural mediation, Museums and Diverse Audiences: Guide for an Inclusive Experience

Based on a major action-research project, Cultural Mediation, Museums and Diverse audiences: Guide for an Inclusive Experience is a practical tool for museum institutions, especially those working directly with audiences, to better equip them for interventions with people from marginalized groups.

A collaboration between Écomusée and a team of researchers, they identified three types of marginalized audiences with whom they hoped to reflect on cultural mediation: disabled people, people living with mental health issues, and people from immigrant communities. The project unfolded with 4 partners: the Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiés et immigrantes (TCRI), the Centre for Research on Work Disability Policy (CRWDP), the Regroupement des ressources alternatives en santé mentale du Québec (RRASMQ) and Justice et foi, twelve community organizations, and over 100 participants.

The result is a bilingual publication in the form of a practical guide. An online version is available on the Écomusée du fier monde website.

Participatory drawing device Nous, dess(e)in by Fanny H-Levy. Photo — Daphnée Bouchard

The research teams and the Écomusée du fier monde are very much encouraged by winning this award, because it recognizes the validity of the subject: offering an inclusive experience to all museum audiences. It also affirms the relevance of research-action performed in close collaboration with the people concerned, in partnership with researchers and the institution, to produce dissemination formats that can be easily appropriated by their communities.

— Eve Lamoureux

Honourable Mention

Museum of Anthropology at UBC — A Future for Memory: Art and Life after the Great East Japan Earthquake

A Future for Memory: Art and life after the Great East Japan Earthquake is a research project that has resulted in a major exhibition at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC (MOA), in which the traces of memory and history, and their symbolic value in moments of collective grief and reconstruction as well as the bias inherent in the ways we may see the situation from outside Japan are examined and explored.

“It is an honour for the collaborative project, A Future for Memory: Art and Life after the Great East Japan Earthquake to be recognized by the CMA. I would like to dedicate this award to all the people I have met in Tohoku since March 11, 2011.”

— Dr. Fuyubi Nakamura, Curator

Honourable Mention

The Rooms Corporation — Future Possible: An Art History of Newfoundland and Labrador

Future Possible: An Art History of Newfoundland and Labrador is a comprehensive art history of Newfoundland and Labrador that mixes both personal reflections and scholarly overviews of particular aspects of the province’s art.

Future Possible features essays by curators and artists on topics such as pre-Confederation art; contemporary art, craft, and Indigenous culture; and outsider and folk art.

"The first book of its kind in the province, Future Possible showed that Newfoundland and Labrador art is worth recording as a vibrant, multivocal and key part of the global arts community. The Honourable Mention further bolsters that recognition of the project’s value.

— Mireille Eagan, Curator of Contemporary Art

Honourable Mention

Art Gallery of Ontario — Picasso: Painting the Blue Period

Picasso: Painting the Blue Period is the first exhibition in Canada to focus on the early works of Pablo Picasso. Concentrating on the years 1901-1904, the exhibition tells the story of how Picasso, then a fledgling painter in his late teens and early twenties, formulated his signature Blue Period style as he moved back and forth between the cities of Paris and Barcelona.

“Thank you, CMA, for recognizing our collective achievement. Our international team of conservators, scientists, and art historians brought new technologies to Canadian museums and advanced rigorous, multidisciplinary scholarship on a leading figure of twentieth-century modernism. We hope our groundbreaking exhibition inspires others to embrace the field of technical art history.

We would also acknowledge our collaborators at The Phillips Collection: Susan Behrends Frank, curator, and Patricia Favero, associate conservator.”

— Kenneth Brummel and Sandra Webster-Cook