Ontario Association of Art Galleries

We often think we have already learned what there is to know about art of the past. However, a physical encounter with the artwork itself – its corporeal reality, the information it carries about its maker, the light it reflects, its own aesthetic ideas – can unmake any such assumption.  I learned through the Group of Seven Project 1920–2005, that art history students today – and the emerging curators among them – still have plenty of opportunity for serious work. 

In the spring of 2004, the Art Gallery of Ontario invited members of the Ontario Association of Art Galleries to participate in a province-wide festival marking the 85th anniversary of the first Group of Seven exhibition. (That exhibition opened May 7, 1920, at the Art Gallery of Toronto.)

Each public art gallery was to develop a project that reflected a local connection with Canada’s Group of Seven painters.

Where possible, the exhibitions would be augmented by loans from the Art Gallery of Ontario’s large collection, for which the AGO would waive its loan fees and related costs.  There was a tremendous response.  We realized then that the project would truly be province-wide. Over the course of 2005, 29 galleries in 24 communities were involved.
Several galleries undertook significant environmental upgrades to host important AGO works and loans from other Ontario collections. The Ontario Arts Council, the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund and the Ontario Trillium Foundation responded with key funding.

More than 272,000 visitors saw the Group of Seven Project exhibitions across Ontario and more than 58,000 people participated in related art gallery education programs.  

A book documenting the project will be published in December 2006. However, the real story is a lively exchange, continually reshaped and rewritten by new viewers, as artworks coming into our public collections are documented, researched and exhibited.

Demetra Christakos
Executive Director
Ontario Association of Art Galleries