Nicholas de Grandmaison: Recent Acquisitions
May 2 – June 27, 2013
Main Gallery | Centre for the Arts | W600

Nicholas de Grandmaison: Recent Acquisitions
May 2 – June 27, 2013
Main Gallery
Reception: May 2, 6 – 8 pm
Extended viewing hours: Saturdays 10 am – 5 pm

Information concerning the de Grandmaison Oral History Project.

Curator: Josephine Mills

Drawn from the 67 artworks donated by BMO Financial Group, this exhibition features 28 pastel portraits that provide a range of the Aboriginal subjects represented in the gift. The works demonstrate de Grandmaison’s deep respect for the people whom he painted and his exceptional skill at capturing the individual character of his sitters. The exhibition will include a resource area focused on a newly launched oral history project. The U of L Art Gallery and the University Archives are partnering to gather stories on the artist and on the subjects of his paintings. These oral histories will be added to the existing research holdings of archival material on the artist and will help provide context for future audiences attending exhibitions of his works. Information on the oral history project will be provided and people can contact the research team if they wish to participate.

Check the U of L Art Gallery’s website — ulag.ca – for details on a planned informal series of presentations “Conversations about Nicholas de Grandmaison”. These will occur on select Thursday evenings throughout the exhibition. As well, the gallery has extended hours for the run of the exhibition and is open every Saturday along with being open until 8:30 pm on Thursdays in addition to the regular 9 am – 4:30 weekday hours.

Closing Reception & Hoop Dance Performance
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Main Gallery

The closing reception featured a hoop dance performance as well as information about the U of L Art Gallery’s ongoing Nicholas de Grandmaison Oral History Project. Through this project we are collecting stories from First Nations people about their relatives portrayed in de Grandmaison’s work. The art gallery hopes to bring past and present generations together by discovering the story behind the subjects in the portraits. The hoop dance performance showed that First Nations’ cultures are still as proud and strong as they were when de Grandmaison first captured his visual documentation of the subjects.