Museums on Late Blooms

The Aga Khan Museum

Fri, 10 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Many of my friends have been to the Aga Khan Museum for concerts, lectures, and other events. They have also visited the collection there. All the reports I heard were good so I decided it was time for me to make the trek to Don Mills. I was curious to see what they were talking about. The location is out of Toronto’s city core but there would have been no space in the City for the concept to have been realized architecturally. It’s very impressive and I particularly like the Ismaili Centre which has the glass pyramid and I also like the beautiful, peaceful gardens around the site. The Ismaili Centre was not open for viewing the day I was there. I haven’t been doing collages very much lately but I am sharing some of the pictures I took there with you.

The Gardiner Museum

Tue, 24 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

[caption id=“attachment_1951” align=“aligncenter” width=“584”] “And there are many ways to love clay.” (Kevin Browne, Executive Director & CEO)[/caption]

The Gardiner Museum is 30 years old this year. My very first visit was for Doors Open which took place in Toronto on May 24th and 25th. It was fascinating to visit as I had heard so much about the collection from friends. I wondered who the Gardiner’s were and this is what I found: “George Gardiner began collecting ceramics in 1976, initially to decorate his home. His interests were eclectic – Ancient Americas, 18th-century European, and Chinese – and his collections assumed significant dimensions. He was joined in this passion by his wife, Helen, a native of Kirkland Lake, Ont., who had studied at York University. In 1984 they co-founded the Gardiner Museum. The Gardiners’ hope, Helen later wrote, was that the Museum “would contribute in a meaningful way to the understanding and appreciation of ceramic art worldwide.”

ROM Revealed

Sat, 31 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

“We know we are a species obsessed with itself and its own past and origins. We know we are capable of removing from the sanctuary of the earth shards and fragments, and gently placing them in museums. Great museums in great cities—the hallmarks of civilisation.” ~ Kathleen Jam

[caption id=“attachment_1888” align=“aligncenter” width=“584”] A casual glance at crystals may lead to the idea that they were pure sports of nature, but this is simply an elegant way of declaring one’s ignorance. With a thoughtful examination of them, we discover laws of arrangement. With the help of these, calculation portrays and links up the observed results. How variable and at the same time how precise and regular are these laws! How simple they are ordinarily, without losing anything of their significance! The theory which has served to develop these laws is based entirely on a fact, whose existence has hitherto been vaguely discerned rather than demonstrated. This fact is that in all minerals which belong to the same species, these little solids, which are the crystal elements and which I call their integrant molecules, have an invariable form, in which the faces lie in the direction of the natural fracture surfaces corresponding to the mechanical division of the crystals. Their angles and dimensions are derived from calculations combined with observation. (Rene-Just Hauy - French Mineralogist)

Royal Ontario Museum's Rotunda

Fri, 16 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

[caption id=“attachment_1868” align=“aligncenter” width=“584”] The ceiling is made from thousands of sheets of imported Venetian glass, cut into more than a million tiny coloured squares. A team of skilled workers laboured for eight months to install the ceiling. Its sparkling gold, rust and bronze background is inset with red, blue and turquoise patterns, recalling the magnificent mosaics of the Byzantine world and Eastern Europe. Worked out on the golden field are geometrical borders and panels which frame decorative floral designs. The central panel is inscribed with a passage from the Book of Job in the Old Testament: “That all men may know his work” (ROM website)[/caption]