It begins — Contact 2010
Contact doesn't officially start until Saturday, but that doesn't mean there isn't a glut of openings related to it tonight. In keeping with last year's practice, I'll run a photo here every day, from a different exhibition (not sure if the paper will do the same this year or not; last year we got lucky).
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It begins — Contact 2010
In the final throes of my catch-up — and moments before the Contact onslaught descends — I wanted to point you to a handful of shows in their waning moments that are worth a look, if you haven't already. Helpfully, they're all clustered side-by-each along a quiet stretch of Tecumseth Street a little south of Queen, which makes it easier
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Last chances …
Guest Blogger: Gallerist Maren Bargreen I can’t run my gallery without artists —they are the life-blood of any gallery. Without you, I’m just a space with white walls. Read This Before You Approach Another Gallery! I have a pet peeve—and, in speaking with other gallery owners, I am not alone.

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Approaching Art Galleries: Selling Yourself
Busy week. Late again, due to my absence (I'm getting tired of saying that), the Sobey long list was announced, too, with a lot of familiar names — not just because they're well-known Canadian artists, but because they've been nominated before
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Sobey long, long, long list announced.
A stealth contemporary art work is nestling inside the very core of the Picasso and the Avant-Garde exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art . Virgil Marti's pouf, Sigmund, 2010, mixed media, attracts a crowd in the period room created for the Picasso show at the PMA Virgil Marti’s pouf , aka Sigmund, sits in a place of honor–dead center in the beautiful terra cotta red salon room that replicates the 1912 Salon d’Automne. Sigmund is meant for reclining.

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Picasso and the Avant-Garde and who?
Lots of talking and not so much looking on the slate tonight, starting with a couple of events at the U of T campus. The first, at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, carries the unwieldy title “Two conversations on the intersections of love and politics in contemporary art practices;” it's the first of a two part series, bearing the subtitle “Love is the motive force of every emancipatory politics.” I'm not entirely sure what that means, but the series is organized by Toronto force Adrian Blackwell and Christine Shaw, and brings a lot of great people for the conversation; tonight's roster included Power Plant curator Helena Reckitt and Kika Thorne , among others; part two, next week, will put AGO curator Michelle Jacques with artists Luis Jacob and Mike Hoolboom (and others) to discuss the equally mysterious, not terribly emotionally resonant (given the subject) title “Love is an event ignited by the distance between two polarities.” I can only guess it'll be better in execution.

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Talking about love and other things tonight
The Box contemporary art gallery presents the work of artist Leigh Salgado. This collection of original mixed media work will open at the Costa Mesa gallery on Saturday March 20, 2010, from 7:00 PM until 10:00 PM.
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Paper Vernalia: Sculptural Drawings of Leigh Salgado- Saturday Night March 20th
In my further efforts to be a reprint resource for our diminished page space, I wanted to include the full text of my review of “Silent as Glue” at the Oakville Galleries, which was cut short to wedge onto the page in the paper today. That'll teach me to try to review two shows at once (the main attraction, Betty Goodwin, survived largely intact
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Oakville Galleries addendum
We sent this press release out this morning. The grant involved was a small grant–$2,500–but it’s our grant and we love it to death. We hope it’s a precedent–for us and for Philadelphia!–l&r artblog , the Philadelphia region’s oldest and most complete source of online reviews, discussion and opinion on the visual arts, has been awarded a grant by the John S.

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Knight Foundation grant to artblog boosts Philadelphia art scene
Back to that “things you might have seen” problem I mentioned, a couple of note, with a single day to catch them. First, Hadley + Maxwell, a Vancouver duo of conceptual pranskters (I think?) currently on display at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects.
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Last days: Look, listen, enjoy
As I stood in the Philadelphia Museum of Art looking at Henri Matisse’s perpetually fascinating Portrait of Mlle. Yvonne Landsberg , I heard someone say: “Wednesday.” The voice seemed to be coming from behind me. I turned around to see what I might have heard, only to discover I was alone in the gallery.

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Bruce Nauman’s ‘Days’ in Philadelphia
Hey, Hot Shot! 2009 Second Edition is an exhibition at the Jen Bekman Gallery featuring fifteen works from five photographers: Marisa Aragona, Leah Tepper Byrne, Alejandro Cartagena, Jessica Eaton, and Justin James King. Mexican suburban development is the focus…
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Fragmented Cities, Santa Catarina 2008 by Alejandro Cartagena
Last weekend I flew home to Vancouver to attend the Sight/Sites of Spectacle symposium at the University of British Columbia. As I had not gone home to visit my parents for almost three years – this trip was a good opportunity to visit with my parents; try to see a few friends and artists; re-immerse myself in the world of art history for a few days and to feel the anticipation of the city on the eve of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games .

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Spectacles, Biennales and the Winter Olympics
The third iteration of Radiant Dark: Assets & Values closed Sunday, January 24, 2010. Radiant Dark is the brainchild of Shaun Moore and Julie Nicholson of MADE

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Radiant Dark 2010: Assets & Values
This week’s Weekly has my First Friday picks . Little Berlin ’s “ Works on Paper Rejects ”—with drawings, prints, photos and sculpture by artists rejected from the recent Works on Paper exhibit at Arcadia University —is the hot opening this Friday.

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Weekly Update – February First Friday roundup
Explicit views of women’s pudenda have never been in short supply in New York City but one found them on 42nd St.

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Reclaiming Women’s Anatomy: The Visible Vagina at Francis M. Naumann Fine Art and David Nolan Gallery
I just received a notice that brightened up my day: After almost a decade of sitting vacant, Artscape has been given the go-ahead to convert the old Shaw Street School — formerly known as the Shaw-Givins School — into a huge arts complex. The plan, like with other Artscape properties, will see the old school's 70,000 square feet of space repurposed for community arts groups and artists' studios
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Artscape gets go-ahead to repurpose Shaw Street School
Living legends are rare birds indeed — most legends forged at least partially, alas, by death, untimely or otherwise — but Takao Tanabe can make a pretty good case for himself. Now in his 80s, Tanabe, the son of a Japanese immigrant and commercial fisherman in Prince Rupert, B.C., measures up as one of this country's most important Modern painters
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Takao Tanabe’s early years
Finally, museum-exhibition catalogues are going digital. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art will announce a new online catalogue-publishing initiative today. LACMA will kick off the program by publishing 10 out-of-print catalogues online.

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LACMA to publish exhibition catalogues online
Tonight, the always-provocative (but equally hard-to-get-to) Art Gallery of York University's winter opens its winter show, Oliver Husain's “Hovering Proxies ,” where, the gallery tells us, “a new installation forms the backdrop for a new film filmed inside the exhibition for the exhibition.” Yes, I read it four times over, just like you did, and trying to untie the verbal knot (and knowing a little about Husain's work), I'm pretty sure it's a wry doubling of venue-as-subject, leaving the viewer dislocated from the space they inhabit and the artifice they see onscreen. But drop that for a moment and consider the setting Husain conjures, of an internal garden in tropical Jakarta, in the hot season; if nothing else, it'll help take the edge off the gathering January chill
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Micah Lexier at BMO’s Project Room, Oliver Husain at AGYU
