Summer Collections Assistant Nicholas Markowski curated the current project space exhibit featuring seven artworks by Pamela Burrill. (Jayda Taylor/Daily Herald)
The Mann Art Gallery is giving a young, up-and-coming art historian the unique opportunity to curate a permanent collection show.
This is Nicholas Markowski’s second year there as a summer student. He’s currently working towards a double major in history and art history at the University of Toronto.
The gallery had originally slated to display work from Pamela Burrill in November. However, because of its temporary closure for a few months because of COVID-19, staff decided to bump the show up to correspond with the exhibit currently in the main gallery.
“It’s very exciting. It was sort of an unexpected opportunity,” said Markowski.
“I’m really grateful for the opportunity to develop my skills in this sort of job position.”
The curatorial process consisted of looking at images of Burrill’s work before pulling out the physical pieces to see how they mesh together. Markowski decided to display seven of her artworks alternating between sizes, keeping a subtle gradient of colour in mind. He also wrote a curator’s statement.
Registrar Tia Furstenberg hung and lit the pieces.
Pamela Burrill was born in Britain, but lived in Saskatchewan in the late 20th century. She immigrated to Canada following her studies in geography in London, and then travelled to various countries including North Africa, Ireland and Australia.
Burrill completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine arts at the University of Saskatchewan, holding an exhibit at the Mann Art Gallery in 1996. She passed away in 2001.
Part of Markowski’s responsibilities in curating the show is researching Burrill to share with the wider community.
Pamela Burrill: Motion & Gesture is currently on display in the gallery’s project space. In the main gallery is Migration and Transformation, a show by a trioof artistsexploring movement of diseases, animals and humans.
“Basically, we wanted a show to go in here that kind of corresponded to the themes of the main exhibition gallery, but also demonstrated the breadth of Pamela’s work,” explained Markowski.
“So I went through our pieces by her and chose the ones that I thought were thematically coherent with the theme in there, and also just best represented her work.”
Burrill primarily painted landscapes, he said, but in a very abstract way. The paintings of water and clouds, for example, work well with the theme of inevitable movement in the main gallery exhibit.
According to Acting Director/Curator Lana Wilson, the idea of handing a curatorial role to a summer student originated with the Mac Hone exhibit in the John V. Hicks Gallery in January.
That show was curated by a longtime volunteer, Russ Mode. The exhibit originally slated for that time wasn’t feasible because of the large sizes of the artworks, so Mode—who knew Hone—stepped up with a new idea.
“There was an opportunity for a community member to curate, and so I would say that that experience, as well as Nicholas’ knowledge, made me feel confident in giving him the opportunity,” said Wilson.
Normally, the process of curating a show takes months. Markowski, however, pulled it off in a matter of days.
“It was very gratifying for me as a director/curator to be able to give the staff such leeway and really see them rise to the challenge as I knew that they could. It makes me really proud,” emphasized Wilson.
Markowski is also in the process of putting images of Burrill’s pieces online. That’s something that Furstenberg said they’re hoping to do more of, not just because of the pandemic, but to make art that much more accessible.
“This is exhibit is going to be sort of the first one to make an appearance and we’re in the process of putting more artists and their artworks on the website,” she said.
Furstenerg, a recent bachelor of fine arts graduate, was also happy to see Markowski taking on a new role.
“We’ve been trying to give him projects that help him grow to new experiences, and so I think this really helps and ties that all in.”
Pamela Burrill: Motion & Gesture is on display until August 22.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
