Event Details

"Our Mission: We bring people together with art to see, experience and understand the world in new ways.

Our Vision: We will become the imaginative centre of our city and province. We will be welcoming to our visitors, inspiring for our

audiences and innovative in the ways we gather people together to create community through art. We will become a

preferred cultural partner for artistic visionaries from all over the world."

The AGO has received OCAF funding on eight occasions, most recently in 2018, with $300,000 of support for “Anthropocene”, which exceeded attendnace projections. The organization repaid the Fund and is considered in good standing.

This application is for “Picasso: Painting the Blue Period”,the first exhibition in Canada focusing on the Blue Period. The multidisciplinary exhibition will be presented in partnership with The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. which collaborated on conservation studies of the key Blue Period works in their collections (“La Miséreuse Accroupie” and “La Soupe” from the AGO and “The Blue Room” from The Phillips Collection).

The exhibition will reveal discoveries unearthed beneath the surface of the two Picasso paintings from the AGO collection (discoveries that have already garnered considerable media attention). Key Picasso works have been identified – paintings, sculptures and works on paper – to help tell the story about Picasso’s Blue Period and the exhibition will also include a selection of historical and contemporaneous works by Spanish and French artists including Honoré Daumier, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The exhibition will conclude how Picasso repurposed themes and motifs found with the three Blue Period paintings during his Rose Period.

Exhibition components include:

(1) 90 works of art including paintings, sculptures and works on paper some of which have never been exhibited in North America;

(2) audio tour;

(3) three dedicated learning “labs” that will focus on the conservation science behind three key paintings;

(4) a talk and reception for Curators’ Circle members;

(5) public talks and panel discussions featuring artists, scholars, and scientists;

(6) themed film screenings;

(7) related programming for school groups, children and families;

(8) “AGO Live”, a full day and evening of art installations, pop-up talks and art-making activities inspired by the exhibition;

(9) themed programming for adult art classes; and

(10) in-gallery Spanish guitar performances.