Margaret Nazon, an artist from the remote community of Tsiigehtchic, N.W.T., who uses beadwork to illustrate distant galaxies, will be included in a show at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. CBC News reports that Nazon’s beading of the Milky Way will be presented in the Recovering Our Night Sky exhibition on light pollution. It will be placed beside a virtual image of Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night. The exhibition is scheduled to open in November. Nazon said the Smithsonian reached out after seeing her work. “The lady that I spoke to said to me, ‘I want you to go outside, look up at the sky and what you see up there, I want that on there, on your picture,’ so I did that,” Nazon told the CBC.
Ten recent works by Jeff Wall are on exhibit at Gagosian Beverly Hills from Jan. 13 to March 5. It’s the Vancouver photographer’s first show in Los Angeles in nearly 20 years. The works, made in Vancouver and Los Angeles, are described as “near documentary” realist pictures. One features a baited animal trap along a frozen suburban Vancouver creek during mink season. The exhibition is accompanied by the publication of the second volume of Wall’s catalogue raisonné, which documents his work from 2005 through 2021. Published by Gagosian and edited by Gary Dufour, it includes an essay by Jean-François Chevrier and conversations with the artist by David Campany and Thierry de Duve. A retrospective of Wall’s work is on view at Glenstone in Potomac, Maryland, through March.
Ontario galleries, including the National Gallery of Canada, have closed temporarily due to the latest wave of COVID-19. “In an effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19, the gallery has temporarily closed its doors to the public, reopening as soon as safety measures are lifted by the Ontario government,” the National Gallery announced on its website. It will extend memberships to reflect the length of the closure. The Art Gallery of Ontario announced its closure as of Jan. 5, saying it would also extend memberships and reimburse ticket holders. The closures, which also include museums, zoos, science centres, historic sites, amusement parks, festivals and other attractions, were part of sweeping measures announced Jan. 3 by Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Closures will remain in effect until at least Jan. 26. Retail stores in Ontario can open, but are limited to 50-per-cent capacity. Meanwhile, Urban Shaman, an Indigenous artist-run centre in Winnipeg, closed temporarily as of Jan. 5, “due to the high counts of COVID cases in Winnipeg.” Manitoba’s public health rules require proof of vaccination for those 12 years of age and older to attend a museum or gallery. Capacity is limited to 50 per cent or 250 people, whichever is less.