Those travelling through Mississauga will notice new public art in the form of light pole banners stretched throughout the City’s downtown core. This temporary installation by Mississauga-born artist and illustrator, Pranavi Suthagar, celebrates Mississauga’s diversity and cultural identity.
Much of 2020 has been spent reacting and adapting to a new reality brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The new street banner public art also helps to promote local businesses, products, artists and activities through the City of Mississauga’s #MississaugaMade online initiative developed by Tourism Mississauga.
“Being born and raised in Mississauga, I am grateful to be a part of this campaign,” said artist Pranavi Suthagar, who was commissioned by the City’s Public Art Program to create new artwork for the Mississauga Made campaign. “I remember seeing all colourful banners decorating the city growing up and I always wondered who created them. To be selected for this campaign, and given the opportunity to share my perspective on how I view the city is a full circle experience.”
“Tourism Mississauga is very proud to be a part of this year’s street banner campaign, in collaboration with the City’s Public Art Program. Not only are the banners a great way to show our support within the community, but they also offer us an opportunity to celebrate and showcase the work of a local artist”, said Tej Kainth, Manager of Tourism Mississauga. “Mississauga Made is a campaign that supports all our local businesses and the arts, and we encourage residents and visitors alike to join the movement and support our local talents, and all Mississauga has to offer.”
The street art was installed on Friday, Oct. 16 and will remain on the following streets until mid-January 2021:
Living Arts Drive
Duke of York Boulevard
Prince of Wales Drive
Princess Royal Drive
“Mississauga Made is a great local initiative that supports our small business community. During these difficult times, more than ever, we need to stand together and support our entrepreneurs and our local businesses”, said Bonnie Brown, Director of Economic Development Office. “During the month of October, the City has been celebrating Small Business Month, and the Mississauga Business Enterprise Centre continues to offer free webinars and events to celebrate entrepreneurship and help people start and grow their business.”
The next time you visit Mississauga’s downtown, take a closer look at this important artwork and reflect on your own connection to Mississauga.
In the pre-dawn hours of March 18, 1990, following a festive St. Patrick’s Day in Boston, two men dressed as police officers walked into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and walked off with an estimated $500 million in art treasures. Despite efforts by the local police, federal agents, amateur sleuths and not a few journalists, no one has found any of the 13 works lost in the largest art theft in history, including a rare Vermeer and three precious Rembrandts.
The legacy of the heist is always apparent to museum visitors who, decades later, still confront vacant frames on the gallery walls where paintings once hung. They are kept there as a reminder of loss, museum officials say, and in the hope that the works may eventually return. Last month, Richard Abath, the night watchman who mistakenly allowed in the thieves, died at 57. He was a vital figure in an investigation that remains active, but where the trails have grown cold.
Here are five oddities that make this one of the most compelling of American crimes.
The thieves took a really strange array of stuff.
Important paintings were taken from their frames during the heist. But other items that were stolen were not nearly of the same caliber: a nondescript Chinese metal vase; a fairly ordinary bronze eagle from atop a flagpole; and five minor sketches by Degas. The thieves walked past paintings and jade figurines worth millions, including a drawing by Michelangelo, yet they spent some of their 81 minutes inside fussing to free the vase from a tricky locking mechanism.
The handcuffed guard was later scrutinized.
Abath, one of two guards on duty, was handcuffed and gagged with duct tape. He was never named a suspect. But over the years investigators continued to review his behavior because he had, against protocol, opened the museum door to the thieves. (The second guard, who is still living, was never a focus of investigative interest.) The F.B.I. monitored Abath’s assets for decades but never saw any suspicious income. He consistently said he told investigators everything he knew, and an F.B.I. polygraph he voluntarily took was deemed “inconclusive.”
The empty frames have stayed on the walls.
The museum was once Gardner’s home and she wanted to ensure that her expansive art collection was displayed in the same manner she had arranged it. She stipulated in her will that not a thing was to be removed or rearranged, or the collection should be shipped to Paris for auction, with the money going to Harvard University. Though it’s long been reported that the empty frames are left hanging to accord with that will, the museum says that is actually a long uncorrected mistake. “We have chosen to display them,” it said in a statement “because 1.) we remain confident that the works will someday return to their rightful place in the galleries; and 2.) they are a poignant reminder of the loss to the public of these unique works.”
The thieves left behind a prized Rembrandt.
A self-portrait of Rembrandt at 23 was taken down by the thieves but left leaning against a cabinet. “I really believe they probably forgot it,” said Anthony Amore, the museum’s current security chief. The work was on an oak panel, making it heavier than the paintings on canvas that they stole. But it was about the same dimensions as Govaert Flinck’s “Landscape With an Obelisk,” which was also on oak, and stolen.
The list of suspects has been a dizzying stew.
Investigators have looked at all manner of burglars and art thieves and dismissed all sorts of theories. Did Whitey Bulger steal the art to help the Irish Republican Army raise money for arms? No. Did the Mafia want a bargaining chip to help free a member from prison? Maybe. In 2015 the F.B.I. named two long-dead, Boston-area criminals, George Reissfelder and Lenny DiMuzio, as the likely bandits. They have never publicly discussed why.
Investigators still hope to recover the art. The museum upped its reward to $10 million in 2017 from $5 million in 1997 and $1 million in 1990. It has devoted several sections of its website to educating the public about the crime. It embraces publicity in the hope that someone, someday, somewhere will recognize one of the artworks and contact it.
“We have followed every lead and continue to check out new leads,” Amore said, adding, “All that matters is finding out where they are today and getting them back.”
Banksy is back with his first confirmed installation of 2024.
The anonymous British street artist posted on his Instagram account on Monday that he was behind a mural that was first spotted in Finsbury Park in London over the weekend.
In the artwork, a stenciled figure of a woman appears to have sprayed green paint over a white wall behind a pollarded tree, thus giving an optical illusion effect of foliage.
Others suggested it was a pessimistic take on the environment or a commentary on greenwashing, the tactic the United Nations defines on its website as “misleading the public to believe that a company or other entity is doing more to protect the environment than it is.”
Documentarian James Peak, the creator of the BBC’s “The Banksy Story” radio series, said the message is “clear” that “nature’s struggling and it is up to us to help it grow back.”
“When you step back, it looks like the tree is bursting to life, but in a noticeably fake and synthetic way,” he told the broadcaster. “And it’s pretty subtle for a massive tree, I’d say.”
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