In 2017, Montreal is celebrating not only Canada’s sesquicentennial but also the city’s 375th anniversary and the 50th anniversary of Expo 67. To help in the latter, York University is lending its Alexander Calder sculpture, Model of Man, that stands behind The Goldfarb Centre for the Arts. The reason? The Calder sculpture (called a stabile), though it is about four metres tall (which is approximately 12 feet in height), was a maquette for the giant 21-metre-high Man commissioned for the Expo 67 site, where it still stands. When in 1967 the maquette was donated by The International Nickel Company of Canada to York University, the corporation also donated Man to Montreal.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Man and His World, from May 17 to October 27, Model for Man will be exhibited in an outdoor sculpture exhibition along Sherbrooke Street. York University is being doubly collegial as the exhibition is a production of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), in collaboration with the McCord Museum and with the support of Concordia University, McGill University and the City of Montreal.
Then it will become part of the MMFA’s Calder retrospective, Radical Inventor, from September 17, 2018 to February 3, 2019.
The Calder sculpture left the Keele campus on March 22. It is now being restored. The Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) and the MMFA are collaborating on the restoration of the Calder so that when it arrives back it will be in pristine condition.
Submitted by Philip Monk, director, AGYU