Butterfly Garden blooms in Banff

Calgary Herald: “A patch of turf at The Banff Centre, between Glyde Hall and the Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building, holds one of Canada’s most unusual works of art. It is a living entity that grows, changes and dies, only to experience rebirth. It sustains life. It has healing properties. It requires weeding, watering, digging and planting. Designed and planted by Mike MacDonald, an artist of Mi’kmaq, Boethuck, Irish, Portuguese and Scottish ancestry, it is a garden of native plants that attract butterflies.”

Artist Rebecca Belmore and curator Anthony Kiendl receive Hnatyshyn Awards

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Marketwire: The $25,000 Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Awards for outstanding achievement by a Canadian artist is awarded to Rebecca Belmore, while the winner of the $15,000 award for curatorial excellence in contemporary art is Anthony Kiendl, Director/Curator, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art.

Belmore was a resident artist at The Banff Centre in the 1990s. (Belmore has also been selected by CBC as one of the 10 most significant visual artists of the 2000s [photo gallery number 3].)

Kiendl was the Director of Visual Arts, Walter Phillips Gallery, and the Banff International Curatorial Institute at The Banff Centre from 2002 until 2006.

Reviewer enjoys “Topsy-turvey show” from the WPG

Victoria Times Colonist: Review of current exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. “The two largest galleries are given over to The World Upside Down, an exhibit of contemporary art initiated by the Walter J. Phillips Gallery in Banff. For even the most casual visitor there is much to engage — bright paintings, figurative sculpture and a photo reconstruction of Da Vinci’s Last Supper.”

Gondolas make way for Canuck canoes at Venice Biennale

Toronto Star: “Baldwin, a Toronto artist, is leading the second installation of Reverse Pedagogy, an artists’ residency program-cum-social experiment. Winnipeg artist Paul Butler hatched the idea at the Banff Centre last summer; he handed it to Baldwin this year, who brought it here on the eve of the Venice Biennale, the art-world equivalent of the Olympics.”