Public art galleries are in lockdown across Ontario due to the COVID-19 crisis. The temporary closures include the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, which shut as of Dec. 21 to protect the health and safety of visitors, staff and volunteers. The gallery may open as early as Jan. 24, depending on health and safety regulations from the Ontario government, said director Sasha Suda. The gallery is maintaining online connections via Virtual NGC and the glass roof of its Great Hall will be lit up with special aurora borealis lighting through January. Public galleries in Toronto closed earlier, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, which was shuttered temporarily on Nov. 22.
The National Portrait Gallery is seeking its first executive director, along with exhibition proposals from curators. The director will be hired on a part-time two-year contract. The deadline for curatorial submissions is Jan. 29. The gallery is a federal not-for-profit corporation that envisions a future partnership with the federal government to secure a collection of contemporary and historical portraits within a physical exhibition space in the National Capital Region. For information, go to the call for curators and executive director.
PLATFORM, an artist-run centre in Winnipeg, has announced a one-time micro-grant program. It's open to Manitoba artists who use lens-based practices and will support the production and creation of new work. A total of seven micro-grants of $500 will be awarded. Send queries to director@platformgallery.org.
M:ST Performative Art and the Calgary Black Empowerment Fund, a grassroots organization that sparks Black empowerment initiatives, have two new research fellows. Bianca Guimarães de Manuel, who splits her time between Brazil and Canada, and Qian Cheng, a first-generation Chinese immigrant, will research aid and resource distribution outside the non-profit arts sphere. Go to www.mountainstandardtime.org for more information.
The Joanne & Alice Application Support Fund for Black and Indigenous People will cover the cost of applying to the MFA program at UBC. The fund is named in honour of Joanne Njootli of Old Crow, Yukon, and Alice Macaulay, of Vancouver. Murray Quinn, an art collector in Grande Prairie, Alta., is the first donor to support the initiative. Contact ahva.dept@ubc.ca for information.
The Sector Equity for Anti-Racism in the Arts has launched an interdisciplinary anti-racism initiative. Created by arts service organizations and other sectoral leaders in British Columbia, it is raising money to support artists facing systemic racism. The goal is to distribute up to $1 million to Black, Indigenous and other racialized artists facing financial hardship in the province. Contributors include the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and Access Gallery in Vancouver. More information is available at searafund.ca.
The Mann Art Gallery in Prince Albert, Sask., has received a $10,000 bequest from the estate of local artist Andrée Felley-Martinson. The money will be used to purchase art. Felley-Martinson, who was born in Switzerland in 1920, had a retrospective at the Mann in 2015. Many of her works are in the gallery's permanent collection. She died in 2019.