Two awards for the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) recognize the impact of the facility’s programming in both exhibiting art and offering educational opportunities to the community.
The 46th Annual Galeries Ontario / Ontario Galleries (GOG) Awards, which took place Dec. 2, named the AGYU as the recipient of its Education Award and its Exhibition, Design and Installation Award.
The GOG Awards is the only annual juried awards program of its kind, recognizing the “outstanding achievement, artistic merit and excellence of arts institutions and professionals in the public art gallery sector.”
“It is always encouraging to be acknowledged by your peers. The GOG Awards give those of us working in public art galleries and museums the time to reflect on the work being presented in our field and give due credit to those who are pushing their work in truly engaging and creative ways,” says Jenifer Papararo, director/curator, Art Gallery of York University. “We at AGYU are proud of our colleagues Felicia Mings and Allyson Adley, who both received awards for their unique programs. Adley was awarded for Arts on My Mind, a program she developed in the community to give youth access to develop their crafts by pairing them with professional musicians and poets from the Jane-Finch neighbourhood. Mings, who won for the exhibition design for Meleko Mokgosi: Imaging Imaginations, a curatorial response to space and community that featured a massive, nine-panel figurative painting spanning 16 feet high and over 40 feet in length.”
Read about these exhibits, and how they exemplify excellence in the arts, in this YFile story.
The AGYU was also noted as a partner in the GOG’s First Exhibition in a Public Art Gallery Award, which went to the Art Gallery of Peterborough for the Tim Whiten – Elemental: Earthen exhibit. Whiten is a professor emeritus at York University with a prolific career in the arts.
The AGYU is a socially minded not-for-profit contemporary art gallery that is a space for the creation and appreciation of art and culture. It is a supported unit of York University within the President’s Division. It is externally funded as a public art gallery through the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, local and international foundations, embassies and its membership, who support all of its programs.
Find out more about AGYU programming.